


Pressure Point

by Moriarty (DamnedAfterAll27)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-09
Updated: 2016-07-09
Packaged: 2018-02-28 20:14:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 27,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2745554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DamnedAfterAll27/pseuds/Moriarty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"That was Moriarty's advantage, see. He would leave no trace behind, no connection. Now...now we've got our way in. Her."</p><p>Elizabeth was Moriarty's first and only love. After years apart, they meet again in London- this time at the height of his career. She agrees to help him- if only to show her allegiance. But they're being watched and followed, by none other than the consulting detective himself. </p><p>But Elizabeth holds her own secret concerning the two Holmes brothers, and plans to lead them on a game of cat and mouse, at Moriarty's request, until he can break them both. </p><p>Keeping up with the tragic couple is breaking Sherlock in half- until he discovers that he now has one advantage against his old enemy- the pressure point.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Meeting

_County Kildare, 1999._

It was beside a lake in County Kildare, just a few miles away from the sprawling estate that his parents owned, did Jim Moriarty first kiss his Elizabeth.

He had rolled his jeans up around his knees, revealing pale, skinny ankles that disappeared under the depths of icy cold lake water, feet wiggling as the current moved around him. His shirt was half unbuttoned and untucked from the waistband, a red and black check that accentuated the tight muscles of his back, product of a summer spent working around the stables and across the lush forestry that decorated the estate.

He didn’t mind the laborious work, not even when the sun burned the back of his neck to a crisp the colour of Hell itself, because it stopped him thinking. And, when he looked up every so often, Elizabeth would be watching.

She was beautiful, he had decided when he was five years old. Her parents, friends of his parents, had come to the house for a week and brought their gorgeous little daughter with them. Back then, she’d been short and coated with a cuddly layer of baby fat. Her head had been covered in a disarray of chocolate coloured curls, difficult to brush and even worse to tame into something tangible, but they were adorable. He remembered when he first saw her- rolling down one of the hills until grass covered her pristine white dress. She had looked like an angel back then, and there was no way that that had changed in the thirteen years they’d been best friends. Elizabeth was a native of London, a place he had only visited twice in his eighteen years of living, but every summer she would return to Kildare, spending a glorious two and a half months by his side. Now, she was still short, but slim. With the grace of a tipsy swan, she often liked to say in description of herself, her mane of once unending hair had now been tamed into soft licks of cocoa that drifted around her shoulders and ended neatly just above her breasts.

Not that he had looked of course.

Her face was pointed, precise, features drawn on with a pencil that took in every soft curve that the light had blessed her with. Even now, she looked beautiful. Her t-shirt was sticking to her back with light perspiration from hiking all the way down to the lake, and her long, billowing skirt had been hiked up around her waist so that her toes could run themselves across the water.

Jim stared out across the lake, the ever-impending thought that September was just around the corner tugging at the depths of his mind, reminding him that each moment he spent with Elizabeth was one less that he got to keep and remember. It was a terrifying, existential void creating thought, but one that plagued him every single year. She grinned then, staring over at him until she could reach out and give him a playful shove, wanting to peer inside of his head.

“Tell me what you’re thinking about, Jimmy. You look like you’re contemplating the meaning of life,” she murmured as the wind whispered in their ears, the clouds beginning their race across the once empty sky.

“About how much I’m going to miss this. When you go back,” he said, not daring to look at her just in case he did something stupid.

“But I always go back,” she laughed softly, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her pointed ear, “What exactly makes this time different?”

“Well…you might not be back next summer. I mean, you’re going to university. You might want to go to Asia or Australia for two and a half months, not boring old Kildare. In some of those places it doesn’t even rain.”

His voice, despite having aged and broken since his choirboy days, still cracked in the most awkward of places. As he smiled, uttering that tiny string of laughter that always seemed to follow half of his utterances, she leant back, staring up at the sky. Elizabeth wore a thoughtful look like a t-shirt sometimes.

“Australia’s too hot. Asia- well, from what I can remember there, you get a lot of weird looks for being white and having a funny accent. At least in Kildare, there’s…” she glanced around the surrounding fields, scrunching her nose in quick thought, “Horses! And loads of space. And most importantly- you’re here.” He smiled again, wide enough to reach the tips of his elf like ears.

“That’s true- who needs the Sydney Opera House when you’ve got my face?”

She giggled, a sound to him that was like the breeze during the heatwave- exactly what he needed to relax. For a moment, they sat in a comfortable silence, watching as the lake trickled around their feet, the few fish that had survived in such a terrible climate pausing every so often to flick them condensing looks. Jim was barely entranced and yet, he didn’t even notice how close Elizabeth suddenly was to him. How she was looking at him. How her hand was creeping across the small plank of wood that separated them and leaning towards his hand.

“Jim, I thought you were meant to be smart,” Elizabeth said.

“Hm?”

“Why haven’t you kissed me?” she asked bluntly, her face displaying a genuine concern for the matter.

“Oh. Um…I-I don’t know, I really am—I apologize if that’s---“ he stumbled, face turning a brilliant shade of red at the thought of actually kissing a girl, let alone even going near one.

Elizabeth seemed to be the only one with a vague interest in him. Girls at school had chosen other boys, friends of his, who all seemed to possess some kind of chemical in them, or some kind of skill, that allowed them to be inherently attractive. Obviously, he’d missed the lesson.

“If I kissed you now- would you push me in the lake?” Elizabeth asked again.

“What? No!”

She didn’t say another word. Simply leaned over and kissed him. It was wet. And a little bit sticky. Neither of them really knew what to do- but based on the sudden rush of adrenaline to his stomach, Jim could assume that she was the expert out of the two of them. Before he could even register it, Elizabeth had pulled away, leaping to her feet and reaching for her tan coloured sandals.

“I liked that. Did you? Come on- I’ll race you up to the barn,” she challenged, before tearing off into a run up the hill, the wind blowing her skirt up around her knees. For a moment, Jim sat, confused and blissfully ignorant for the briefest moment.

Girls were the strangest invention he’d ever come across. But he was quite certain now, that he was in love with Elizabeth. And that love would be unconditional.

 

* * *

_London, 2014._

He grabbed her with a brute force that only lust could have propelled out him, slamming the door to the hotel room shut with his foot. Each kiss, each burning hot exchange between their lips was like an electric shock, bringing his nerves to the edge of explosion every single time. His hands roamed over her body, starting around her back and shoulders until they have weaved through the lacy fabric of her dress and found her tight hips, squeezing until little blossoms of bruises were bound to appear the next morning. Elizabeth’s hands gripped at his suit jacket, pulling the fabric inbetween her fingers and tugging.

Finally, she reached for his crop of neatly quiffed hair, running her fingers through the strands until she could tug violently, exposing a growl to rival a lion’s that erupted from his throat. They were frantic, as though someone was coming after them, racing to catch them in the act when really, all the time in the world was suddenly on their side. It was sloppy and horrendously filthy, but it felt like heaven every time they grabbed at each other, sweet little moans leaving her lips whenever she was given the chance to breathe.

“Well, now I wish I’d remembered the riding crop,” Elizabeth whispered breathlessly, lips tugging themselves away from his lips and biting at her throat, forcing marks upon them that would be silently questioned by the next morning’s commuters as she made her way back to her flat in Chelsea. Jim paused for a moment, staring up at her with a bemused questioning. As his hand trickled along her back to the curve of her ass, pinching the skin, he spoke, voice as thick and rough as rock.

“I did always enjoy spanking the innocence out of you, dear Elizabeth.”

“And I likewise, Mr Moriarty. You always seemed to enjoy it when I was on top.”

With a growl, he grabbed her thigh, running his hands over the black garter that was strapped tightly to her leg. His lips were about to tackle hers when his palm paused over a small blade of silver, tucked between the materials that separated the dress from her stockings. Jim glanced up, a delicately aroused smile decorating his lips as he caught her eye.

“Good girl,” he whispered as he fingered the switchblade, before he grabbed her chin and crushed his lips against hers, yanking her once carefully styled hair into his hands.

They moved, rolling frantically across the blood red wallpaper until they reached the centre of the room, legs thumping against the king size bed. His lips moved to her neck once again, brushing over her shoulders until finally, he wrestled a shaky moan from her, louder than each of her blessed little whimpers before. She shifted one shoe away at a time, Jim’s hand coming to rest on the small of her back as she fell to her ordinary height. As Elizabeth shrugged away the cape that had been wrapped around her shoulders, pushing away Jim’s jacket, his lips moved away, fingers brushing over the material covering her hips, almost lovingly.

"You remembered that red was my favourite colour.”

“I suppose I did.”

Elizabeth reached up and kissed him again, biting his bottom lip between her teeth until he moaned, a sound sweeter than the hummingbirds in spring. Her own personal heaven. He grinned against her, hands fumbling for the zipper on the back of her dress, dragging it down with a desperate urgency to see some flesh.

“And you got rid of those glasses- they would have just gotten in the way.”

“You’re so good at talking dirty, aren’t you?” Jim paused for a moment, watching like a dog in heat as the dress fell from her hips and pooled around her feet, leaving her in two scraps of black lace and little else.

“Bastard,” Elizabeth finally purred.

“Slut.”

“Asshole.”

“But you _love it_.”

“I hate you.”

“Not as much as I do.”

Grabbing her, Jim lifted her legs around his waist and promptly threw her onto the bed, pushing her thighs apart as he crawled between her, kneeling up as she scrabbled for his shirt. Too many clothes were in the way, and within seconds, his soft expensive charcoal trousers were in a puddle next to her dress. Their lips met and parted every few seconds, exchanging heated kisses that made her skin blush a crimson they only ever did for him. His fingers were skilled, quick. Getting rid of her bra, her underwear, leaving her bare before him- naked in more ways than one. It was upon that that he sat back, drinking her in like a parched man in an oasis. It had been much too long.

“Lizzy,” he murmured, hands stroking over the arc of her chest, “I have certainly missed you.”

“Well…aren’t you a fox this evening?”

“I always preferred the term Daddy- gives me that little edge, don’t you think?” he asked softly, watching with laboured breathing as she reached for his shirt and ripped each little button from its hold, desperate to see his naked chest.

“Don’t push your luck, Moriarty,” she warned, biting her lip with considerable force as his shirt was thrown to the floor, flexing muscles pushing her further into the bed. He moaned.

“That’s it Lizzy, say my name.”

He reached for her legs, hooking one around his waist and holding the other up, allowing his to press chaste, lingering kisses against the flesh. She could the feel the heat between her legs, burning, a tempting crooked finger to bring Jim ever closer. He had learned a few moves since their last excursion- enough to make her tip her head back onto the pillows and let his lips do whatever they pleased. When they reached the arc of her hips, close enough to her pussy that he could see the wetness that decorated the front of her folds, they paused suddenly.

“I’m going to prison tomorrow,” he whispered, voice suddenly numb with a strange kind of fear that she hadn’t heard since they were eighteen. She positioned herself up on her elbows, reaching for his angular jaw and staring him dead in the eye- too turned on to stop now.

“I don’t care- because we’re going to fuck right now, and then you can go to prison,” she reminded him, fingers scrabbling for his attention once again, diving into his dark hair and stroking, as though petting a cat who had somehow perched between her legs.

He ran one free hand over his face, a sudden blankness decorating it. Almost as though he was slipping out of the mood, despite the roaring furnace of lust that danced in his bright irises.

“Lizzy,” he whispered in a broken little voice, “I’m gonna---“

“Listen to me,” Elizabeth ordered, sitting up from her position on the bed and placing her hands on his cheeks, pulling him up gently until he was knelt down in front of her, searching for comfort, “You are going to prison. That’s a given. But, you’ll only be in there two, maybe three weeks tops and then, with the money you so generously gave me for this particular purpose, I’m coming to bail you out. Sit tight, Pet. People like us have to look out for each other.”

The light behind his eyes flickered for a moment, the room descending around them into the hazy cloud of potential sex that had hung over the pair of them. Jim was never quite sure what he’d done without Elizabeth, in the few years that they’d been separated, and yet here she was, in the flesh. He let himself be moved, turned over onto his back into the duvet as she crawled around him like a serpent, bare flesh pressed up against him. There was something about her that called him to reach out and touch, to press and stroke and feel until he was once again that she, in amidst the madness of his world, was somehow real.

“Funny, Jimmy,” she murmured, pressing a thin line of wet, lipstick kisses along his chest, “This is not what I imagined when you invited me to have dinner with you.”

“Really? Because from my point of view, it’s exactly what I imagined,” he grinned, watching as she rolled her eyes, blood red fingernails digging into the waistband of his boxers and pulling them down his legs.


	2. Our Dear Boy, Elijah

When Elizabeth came to in the early hours of the next morning, Jim’s head was buried between her thighs.

She jolted, clutching for a handful of the white bed sheet around them as her head fell back onto the pillow. Her legs moved, clamping around his neck as she felt his tongue just that little bit deeper against her, two or three fingers pushing their way past any resistance she had once built up. He had always been good at this kind of thing; a giver rather than a receiver.

There were times when he’d crept into her bedroom late at night, his parents dead to the world, crawling underneath her bed sheets and teasing her awake. Dragging her down underneath the covers until they were lost in each other. The only two people left in the world. Other times they’d been less secretive, less brash. He’d grab her and pull her into the barn, locking the door and fucking her up against the side of the horse’s stable, both of them high on the idea that they could be caught at any moment.

“ _Fucking_ …Jim…” she breathed, keening desperately when all of his touch moved away and from underneath the sheets, his head appeared next to her naked breasts, grinning like the cat who got the cream.

His hands continued to move, fingers pounding in and out of her as she rocked, succumbing to his rough touch, letting herself be guided.

“Doesn’t this bring back such wonderful memories?” he asked her, positioning himself a little higher so that he hovered just above her. She keened again, whimpering as his fingers curled inside of her.

And yet his eyes would never leave her. He would never stare directly into her own, not before her orgasm, but instead watched the heaving of her chest in short, sharp pants as he dug deeper into her. Watched like a wolf as a thin layer of sweat trickled over her neck and naked flesh.

“Shut up,” she managed to spit out, leaning on the back of her elbow as her free hand reached up to tangle itself in his mop of dark hair, dragging him to her lips.

His fingers still pushing in and out as her stomach burned, they kissed, roughly and sloppily. All tongues and lips colliding together messily, slick sounds of sex filling the room. Jim’s hand disappeared underneath the sheets, wrapping quickly around his cock and pumping. He could feel her open herself to him, clenching and whimpering at each movement, body pulsating like a miniature electric shock had passed through her skin. Their lips were wrenched apart, swollen and the crushed red colour of bludgeoned berries, and for the first time, he dared to look into her blown eyes. The sight itself was enough to make him groan, louder than a man at full moon.

“Come,” he ordered viciously, the expression of the devil himself decorating Jim’s usually kind features.

Elizabeth’s eyes squeezed closed as with a strangled shout, the room collapsed around her. With each shot of pleasure that turned her blood to honey, she and Jim became the only two things in the world that mattered.

“Good girl,” he growled again as her breathing became laboured again, sucking the oxygen out of the air.

Within moments, Jim had stiffened, the covers pushed away from their bodies so he knelt, naked before her, bringing himself to orgasm. There were no words exchanged between them, not even when she reached down between their tangled limbs and replaced his hand with her own. He buried his face into Elizabeth’s shoulder; hissing, biting, kissing- anything that would soften the sounds of lust he made. He whispered her name as he came, as though it spun gold in his head whenever it was uttered. The moment was suspended, frozen and he moved his head and smiled at her.

“Good morning, Lizzy.”

“Good morning. Jim.”

He reached over the bed sheet, wiping away the mess that the pair of them had made. A phone buzzed somewhere, though as she reached over for it, she didn’t seem to care whether it was her own or Jim’s.

“That’ll be Tiger,” Jim murmured as he flipped the duvet over, pulling his boxers back up from around his knees and climbing into bed next to her.

“Why on earth would he text me? Whatever he has to tell me, he’d just whisper to you first.”

“True,” he chuckled, deftly timing his yawn with the movement of his arms until one was wrapped around her naked shoulder, drumming lightly against her skin, “Open it. The suspense is truly killing me.”

With a light chuckle and a quick rearrangement of her upper body so that it lay, balanced against the sturdy, pale chest of the man sat beside her, Elizabeth opened the message. Her heart stopped.

‘ _EH is dead. S &M know he’s a fake. Your move, Lizzy. S.’ _

_“_ Shit. _Shit_. Fucking….shit.”

“Interesting choice of vocabulary there, Lizzy,” Jim muttered, leaning over her shoulder to read the short but less than sweet message Sebastian had left for her.

Within seconds his body had turned from relaxed and easy, basking in a hazy glow of after-sex euphoria, to the man of business and psychotic sadism that his closest friends had known him to be. Their plan, so beautifully crafted in its works and routes, was unravelling like a piece of string, falling apart at the seams and leaving nothing but rubble and disaster in its wake.

He’d worked it out much too early.

“I thought we had another fortnight, at least,” Elizabeth said, pausing for a moment before softly admitted, “He’s good.”

“But that’s only because he loves our games. He dresses it up as silent but sure astuteness, pedantically so, but really he craves it. This. Cat and mouse. It’s like nicotine, heroin- it’s better than sex to him.”

“If only he knew what that was.” Jim leaned over and pressed a kiss so gentle to the lobe of her ear that she could feel the hairs on the back of her neck stand up on end, raising from her flesh to meet him.

“Don’t be so naïve, Kitten,” he whispered, voice travelling around her like an echo, “I heard that he and Ms Adler really hit it off when they met.”

“He probably thinks he’s too intelligent for something as simple as sex,” she replied.

There was silence between the pair of them for the moment. Elijah was dead, the one pawn they had played in years of games with one Mr Holmes. She had believed they wouldn’t catch on for another few weeks- the brothers had always believed that their third member would turn up sooner or later. Or that there even was one. It was fun to mess with them.

“I think we should play The Calling Card Crime next. Don’t you?” Elizabeth asked suddenly, tilting her head up to the point where the sunlight appeared to kiss her soft hair, the light shimmering from its rich tones.

“Explain,” Jim ordered quietly, eyes glazing over as his mind began to talk with her.

“We give him some clues. Not enough where they’re consistent- no, that would be much too easy. Just little, random things. A message here and there. Added cameras. Tiger can go on the prowl. And then all is revealed just as the _genius_ works it all out.”

Jim’s face had always been a little robotic in times of intimacy- he never liked to reveal too much emotion. His theatrics were often saved for his jobs, where he was given the blissful extension of a frozen moment in time to play with his subject before their brains plastered the walls. And now, before her for the first time, his expression remained strangely blank.

“Perfect. Execution begins this morning, I hope.”

“You’d hope correctly. I’ll call Sebastian when I leave.”

“And what do we do about M?” he asked.

His voice, for the first time all morning, was more revealing than his expression could ever be- he was worried. Anxious that somewhere in his meticulously planned scheme a loophole would be found, manipulated, and torn open until somebody got hurt. Despite the elaborate act that his lead-ups to murders often provided, beneath it was the insecure eighteen year old, not wanting to be wrong.

“We bide our time,” Elizabeth replied firmly, “Normally, he’s about as useful to us as a fish in a chocolate cake- but for this? I’ll let him sit. He knows things.”

Before she could stop him, Jim had pulled himself out of the bed, strolling calmly across the floor until he reached his crumpled clothes. He pulled them up into his arms, stroking out the creases until his suit vaguely resembled something he could wear in public. And only then did he look over at the naked woman in his bed and offer her something of a smile.

“Get up,” he told her quietly, a sombre reassurance that their time together had come to an abrupt close, “They’ll be here soon.”

They dressed in a strange sort of silence, and as Elizabeth watched Jim straighten himself up, brushing his hair with a small comb he kept in his pocket, she observed his transformation. This morning, just minutes before, he had been the awkward eighteen year old in Kildare, who had discovered the craving embers of his sexuality with her in the most unhygienic of places, had been sat by her side, kissing her. Touching her. _Loving_ her.

And then in seconds, at the mention of a message from Sebastian, he had turned into the stone cold monster that she had watched and fallen in love with each passing year. He looked like a criminal, though only a select few could notice. Prepared for whatever someone had to throw at him- and wherever he was put next. Finally, Jim pocketed the comb and turned, holding out his hand to her.

“Come here, Elizabeth.”

He’d taken to calling her by her full name again. No more Lizzy. They were back to staunch formalities.

The storm was coming.

They stood, the room once again returned to the pristine condition it had been discovered in, and their clothes now placed upon their bodies, rather than in large floods of fabric dotted over the floor. It seemed unnatural to be in each other’s presence with so much material constricting them. Elizabeth reached out and, instinctively, strained the lapels of his suit jacket, fixing the skull-dotted tie around his throat until it sat a precise angle.

She was nervous, he noted without a word.

“The money?” she asked.

“With Tiger.”

“And Sebastian’s location would be…where, exactly?”

“He’ll have a car sent to you at the time I’ve advised. Don’t fret, Kitten. I’ve sorted everything.”

And yet, she still embodied a shiver of anxiety. She bit her crimson bottom lip, once again hastily reaching out to fix his appearance.

“You’re going to prison, Jimmy. I didn’t really think they’d find you,” she whispered, staring up at a man who seemed decidedly calm in such a position of fear.

Any other man would be weeping, begging to be shown the slightest hand of mercy. Instead, Jim Moriarty looked as though he were simply stepping out for a meeting, or going to the newsagents. Elizabeth glanced away again, the sound of the walls creaking like the joints of an elderly man around her, until Jim reached for her chin and pulled her eyes back to him, reaching for her hand.

“Lizzy?” he whispered, his eyes boring into hers, holding her in place.

Suddenly, the eighteen year old had returned to comfort her, to remind her that behind James Moriarty was boring old Jimmy, the boy she loved.

“Yes, Jimmy?”

He didn’t move. “Will you marry me?”

She reached up, running her hands through the quiffed mess of his hair, tracing one flyaway strand away from his forehead and back into the mane.

“Did you even have to ask?”

The sound of running feet filled the air, men in bulletproof armour raiding the empty corridor and preparing to storm the hotel room in a final siege to catch the dastardly man behind a certain Mr Holmes. Jim leaned over, quickly kissing with all the energy he could muster. It was over too quickly, Elizabeth decided as he propelled her towards the closet in the corner, throwing open the doors and ushering her inside.

As she stepped up, the voices grew louder, his name was being called out by all number of breaths, their shouts mixing with the groan of the air conditioner. Before he could shut the door, Elizabeth grabbed it, staring longingly at him.

They were out of time.

“I love you, Jimmy,” she whispered softly.

He grinned. The same kind of grin that the Cheshire Cat gave Alice when he realised that both were simply just figments of someone’s imagination.

“I know you do.”

The door was slammed closed, leaving a tiny crack in its polished exterior for Elizabeth to watch, helpless. The bedroom door was knocked down, ripped from its hinges with a wooden scream as the police team swarmed the room like a hive of bees. And sat in the middle of it, calmly waiting as though he had known all along that they would find him, was Jim. Smiling.

“Morning, Gentlemen. I’ll go quietly,” he began with a smirk, before raising his head to the ceiling, as though he was worthy enough to address God himself, “Be good, Kitten. I’ll see you in three weeks.”

He was cuffed, hands tugged behind his back as sirens began to wail, movements began to be made and the room suddenly became horribly loud, a stark juxtaposition to the quiet of their gentle exchange just minutes before.

They had captured the devil, Elizabeth thought to herself as her pocket buzzed; another message from Sebastian waiting for her.

Pity they didn’t know about the other one still on the streets.


	3. The Bodies In The Hotel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the wonderful reception to this story! I'm very pleased that people are enjoying it- I hope you like this bit too. All will be revealed in due time.

London, 2014. The Previous Night.

“Elijah. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

It was pouring with rain in London’s quiet back streets, in a small office tucked far away from the bustle of Leicester Square. The shouts and wondrous cries of young couples and families with more to their precious little lives than he did, strolled around the city, making its lights the more whimsical element to their visit. Their friendliness, their comradeship was almost alien to the man who watched them, a tiny molecule of his being yearning for such warmth of human interaction, disgusted him. He preferred the silent serenity of individuality, as opposed to the jostled scrum of civilization.

And yet, here, in the government district, so close to Number 10 he could practically see the PM swearing at the kettle for refusing to boil, Mycroft Holmes found himself inexplicably in the company of another human.

In the doorway to his private study stood Elijah, the man that completed the Holmes trio. If he could take a wild guess, he could imagine that Sherlock was probably gallivanting around another corner of the city, sniffing out a murder scene better than the Alsatians they paid to work for the bomb squad. Probably with that simpleton Watson right by his side. A real Batman and Robin duo if he’d ever seen one.

Elijah Holmes was slight and slim, towering over his older brother by a good six inches. He dressed well, like his siblings, and as he stood, bathed in the dark shadows of the dimly lit room, Mycroft could make out the brief glint of the Armani suit he wore. Carefully knotted tie, a navy blue that trickled along his chest like the Nile. His hair had been neatly trimmed and coiffed, its flare of dark blonde contrasting heavily with the two dark heads of his brothers. If he had known any better, he would have guessed that Elijah had done all he could to distance himself from the pair of them. Either that or he was a total liar. But DNA tests were rather conclusive, Mycroft reminded himself in times of doubt. The man that stood before him was definitely his brother.

“Not much, I suppose. I was in the area- I thought I’d drop by. For a little chat,” Elijah replied.

He remained stationary in the threshold of the room, as though waiting for permission to step inside. His voice was crisp yet had a sort of raggedness about it, as though he had been running and was now only finding the breath to regain his formal composure. Mycroft stood from the plush crimson leather chair, gesturing to its neighbour as he moved towards his drinks cabinet.

“Sit. You sound like you’ve just run a marathon.”

“I’d prefer to stand,” Elijah replied quickly as he stumbled inside, and as Mycroft turned and shot him a quizzical look, he patted the inside of his knee, “It’s playing up again. Sitting will only make it worse.”

“I see.”

There was silence between the two brothers for a moment. Elijah stared around the office, up towards the high beamed ceilings and around at the neatly stuffed bookcases, the ornate mahogany desk that seemed to be simultaneously cluttered and yet free of any kind of mess at all. He had established very quickly in the few weeks he’d been in the company of Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes that they did not resonate well with normal people. Each to their own. While Sherlock failed entirely to emit any kind of empathy due to his complete lack of socialization skills, Mycroft was quick witted and eager to learn from others- but didn’t often like to show it. Together, they clashed like the Cavaliers and the Roundheads- but their minds could oust that of international geniuses.

And that was why he remained silent on the matter.

“Can I get you a drink, Elijah? Scotch? Port?” Mycroft asked without turning, hands reaching for the bottle of Glen that sat in the corner of the shelf. It was almost empty, and the last dregs of it slipped from the bottle into Mycroft’s already full glass as he waited for a response.

“Scotch, if you have it. Though I don’t plan on staying very long. Other business, you know.”

“Oh really? And what would that be?”

Mycroft turned, now holding another glass in his hand, and as Elijah grabbed onto it, he couldn’t help but feel the very visible shift of the gun in his inside pocket. If Sherlock had been here, his cover would have been blown minutes ago. It was a clever idea of the Boss, he thought, to target Mycroft first. Mycroft sat, taking another elongated sip of his own drink, watching as Elijah balanced himself against the opposite chair, hands kneading into the flesh around his knee, waiting for an answer.

“There is a rather delicate matter that I have to deal with.”

“Really? Well, I’ve done my fair share of getting little Sherlock out of trouble- if its assistance you require, then my services are at your disposal,” Mycroft replied.

Elijah took a sip of his drink. If his calculations were correct, he could have the bastard shot dead in three minutes, leaving him enough time to drop the gun and leave the scene before someone reported it. Enough time to make it look like a suicide. That poor, tormented Mycroft could no longer take the cruel taunts of a world where his brother preceded over him with astute intelligence and no one seemed to give two shits about his contribution to British politics.

“That won’t be necessary,” he murmured, putting the glass onto the table and pushing it back towards the other man.

Mycroft raised one eyebrow in a slow movement, eyeing the full glass before turning back to his brother. He may not have possessed the incomparable powers of deduction that his sibling boasted, but even he could work out that Elijah was about to do something stupidly dangerous.

“And why not?” Mycroft asked, quietly forcing the other man to take the bait.

“Because that particular matter is your death, Mycroft Holmes.”

Drawing his hand into the inside pocket of his jacket, Elijah pulled out a sleek black revolver, pointing it directly at the other man. Mycroft seemed, disappointingly, unsurprised at this sudden threat.

“Well, this is an interesting turn of events, isn’t it? Murder Mystery party, is it? Am I playing the victim?”

“Shut up. Unless you want those to be your last words, I suggest you treat me a little more civilly.”

Mycroft leaned back in his chair as a shadow danced across the window, the lamp light doing nothing except adding to the atmosphere. Elijah raised the gun, pointing it directly between his brother’s eyes. His hands were shaking- a first time shooter, he guessed.

“I should have known you were a fake,” Mycroft finally muttered, his expression turning rather sullen as he frowned upon this stranger of a man, “I suspect that Sherlock knew it from the beginning but didn’t want to say anything. Thought he’d get a bollocking for it.”

“I’m warning you---“

“I know who you work for. I know that James Moriarty is out there, controlling you,” Mycroft suddenly snarled, leaping up from his chair and slamming his hands down on the desk, “All I need is for you tell me where he is- and I’ll let you leave alive. Fairs only fair.”

Elijah paused, as though he was genuinely considering the offer. But the gun returned, and, with a confident step forward, the barrel was shoved against Mycroft’s forehead, finger tracing the trigger.

“I always hated you, Mycroft Holmes,” Elijah spat.

“Don’t worry,” Mycroft murmured, watching the shadows dance, “I never liked you either.”

And it was only then that a gun shot rang out through the air and Elijah slumped across the desk. Dead. Staring up into the darkness of his hallway, Mycroft slipped back into his chair with a discomforting calmness before addressing the shadows, a twinge of irritation sticking in his throat.

“What kept you?”

“I didn’t want to come. But I suppose if you just _happened_ to leave your only gun upstairs, I had to come and save you,” Sherlock Holmes replied coolly, placing his gun back inside the navy realms of his coat before stepping into the lamp light. With a blank interest, he surveyed the body of their supposed brother before glancing up at his true sibling.

“And where’s John Watson this evening?” Mycroft asked.

“In a cab outside. I didn’t think it was necessary for him to come in. I’ll call Lestrade- he can get rid of the body for you.”

There was silence between the pair of them- neither wanted to say the cordial formalities that they stored up for their various meetings around London, but the presence of a corpse inbetween them stifling their conversation even more so than usual.

“Why didn’t you tell me he wasn’t our brother, Sherlock?” Mycroft finally asked with a sigh. Sherlock turned, glanced down at the dead body once again, and then wrapped his coat around his skinny body, scarf tightening against his throat. “I thought you could have worked it out for yourself,” he replied, turning on his heel and stalking towards the house’s exit, “It wasn’t that hard.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

London, 2014. Morning.

“So, there is no Elijah Holmes then?” John Watson asked for the second time that day.

The cab had barely left the curb outside of 221B Baker Street, and already his mind was full to the brim with questions. Often, it was difficult to get inside of Sherlock’s head- the man spoke in such long winded deductions, twinned with endless metaphors and imagery that he barely had time to process it before the other man had moved onto the next thing. He was like a child with too many toys- too much to think about, and so the only solution was to do everything quickly.

“Of course not,” Sherlock replied, his toes tapping against the floor of the cab with fidgety excitement.

As silence filled with the cab, John rolled his eyes and began his parade of questioning again, wanting to get to the very bottom of the story.

“But how did you work it out?”

“Simple really. Mycroft might have done a DNA test, but these days anyone can get hold of a document like that and tamper with it- in fact I managed to do it for Mrs Hudson once.”

“What?”

“Doesn’t matter. But what does matter is that when you look at the DNA test, there was one blinding irregularity. There are four components to any strand of DNA, in terms that you can understand you’ll call them A, T, G and C, they’re like building blocks. In order to comply with each other, siblings and parents and such have similar DNA codes; the genetic code is passed on during conception. Whereas Mycroft and I share a similar make up of AAATTTCGGGCCCA, or something along those lines, Elijah’s were in a totally different order. There was absolutely no direct correlation between any of them. It doesn’t take a genius to work that out.”

Astounded into a brief solitude of silence, John watched London float past the window for a moment, taking in what Sherlock had reeled off like the alphabet. Finally, he let out a brief sigh of relief and stared over at his friend.

“Or the fact that he didn’t look anything like either of you. He was blonde, for Christ’s sakes.”

Sherlock gave him a look. One that simultaneously told him to shut up and stop acting like an idiot.

The particular scene that they were visiting was, strangely, upon Lestrade’s request. He’d stopped calling Sherlock to every scene he was handed, just because he knew that the man would turn up anyway, making a sweeping but usually accurate conclusion as to what had actually happened, and allow the EMT’s the night off at the pub. But for some reason, the Network had failed to deliver and for the first time, Sherlock was being heralded.

“What did Graham say about the scene? Anything worth listening to?”

“His name is Greg. If you keep calling him Graham, he’ll throw you in the Thames,” John warned him, digging into his pockets for the few notes he scribbled down on a napkin before they’d run out of the door.

“It’s all a matter of formalities,” Sherlock replied as the cab turned a sharp corner.

“I don’t think it is. But anyway,” John straightened the napkin and read, “Two dead teenagers, looks like a suicide pact, though knowing you it’ll be something completely different. EMT’s are surveying the scene---“

“I don’t want them touching anything. Why doesn’t he think it’s a suicide?”

“Because there was a note left for you there.”

“For me?”

“With your name on it and everything. Lestrade’s told everyone to back off- wants you to look at it first.”

The cab paused to a halt outside of a run-down hotel, the sign hanging dangerously from its ledge a good twenty feet above the ground. Its outside premises had been cordoned off with ever-familiar blue and white tape. As Sherlock stood up and stepped out of the cab, ducking back into the window to slip a few notes into the sweaty palm of the driver.

“I should hope so. Come on- this is going to be fun. Things were just starting to get boring.”

Minutes later, Sherlock had burst through the open door, pushing his way past the various members of the police department and barricading his way to a potentially dangerous and contaminated crime scene. When he wasn’t actually experimenting with crack, this was his cocaine. It gave him the shock he needed to stay alive for one more day. The blood pumped through him, his body started to quiver with a brief excitement. This he concluded, was what living was really for.

Lestrade stood, tuning out the scientific technicalities that spilled out of the young EMT’s mouth like word vomit, wondering silently what he could spend his evening drinking or watching. No doubt someone would spend a sleepless night over this particular case- but he had learned which ones to stay awake over, and which to toss away without a second thought much too long ago.

As soon as he spotted Sherlock striding confidently forward, deftly ignoring the fact that the crime scene itself was under strict regulation, he quickly excused himself from the enthusiastic intern and paused the dynamic duo in their path towards the hotel.

“I wondered when you lot would turn up,” Lestrade called from the corner of the room, “Find something else more interesting?”

Sherlock consulted his watch for a second. “It’s only nine- give it time.”

Shaking his head, Lestrade turned and led the way through the hotel. The room itself was on the first floor, right in the corner of a dank corridor- far enough away from the front desk that anyone trying to get in could do so without much interruption, but close enough to other guests that its occupants could be heard.

“Teenagers,” Lestrade announced as they stepped into the room. The two corpses were intertwined like vines, legs and arms spilling over each other on an unmade bed. Both fully clothed and both drowned in a significantly small amount of blood. A gun lay beside them.

 _It’s at the wrong angle to have been used_.  _Someone’s placed it. This is staged._

“We assumed it was just one of those pacts- they’re getting quite popular. But then on closer inspection- we found the card.”

“What card?” Sherlock snapped back, kneeling over the bodies with a childlike curiosity.

“There was a calling card left for you, Sherlock. This wasn’t a suicide- even I could work that one out. Somebody set this up for you to find,” Lestrade muttered.

“It was a murder,” John finished quietly, watching as the other man moved towards the card placed on the intertwined bodies, flesh suddenly pale, “Right, Sherlock? Sherlock?”

It was as though he hadn’t even been talking. Sherlock knelt down and delicately balanced the small blood red card between his fingers, tracing the pad of his thumb over the embellished pattern on the front before he turned it over, surveying the message. And for one brief, unnerving moment, Sherlock Holmes felt his heart shudder to a sickening stop.

‘ _Come and get me, Mr Holmes. It’s time to play a game. LH xxx_ ’


	4. History Only Repeats Itself

Sebastian Moran was not a man who liked to wait.

It was what had driven him to nicotine and an unhealthy addiction with Fruit Ninja, he told himself as he reached for the pack in his inside pocket, cursing softly when he noticed that he was down to his final one. The little bastards were disappearing quicker than he could count, and that would be another twenty or so down the drain. Slipping the final one between his lips, he lit up silently, watching the ash burn and spark a vibrant orange as he sucked in the sweet nicotine. It was his only vice. Jim hated it, said it damaged his reputation to have a sniper who was close to having a heart attack, which is why he liked to do it on the quiet. 

He glanced out across the skyline, the dips and hills of the skyscrapers that kissed the early morning sun. Somewhere out there was someone with his number written on their back, oblivious that sooner or later, their relatives would be stacked around their grave, sobbing. Jim had left him a lot of unfinished business before he’d decided to take his three week vacation to prison, but he was always more than happy to oblige. Taking another drag of his cigarette, Sebastian dug into the pocket of his trousers and pulled out his phone. 9.01. If that car was any later, he’d deal with the driver himself. 

Instead, he opened up the ever familiar app, and, precariously balancing the cigarette between his lips, he began to tap furiously against the screen. The game was a drug in itself- once he’d tried it, he couldn’t seem to tear himself away from it. If Jim ever found out, he’d often told himself, not only would he be out of a job for not being menacing enough, but he’d get the shit ripped out of him. And there was no way he was going down a coward. 

Behind him, the small metal door that led up to the rooftop creaked open, the sound piercing his ears angrily. Quickly pocketing his phone, Sebastian reached for the cigarette and inhaled deeply. He could hear her high heeled feet, that tantalizingly erotic sound of womanhood that he adored. He was a slave to a woman’s touch, he admitted. Tie him down and show him who was really the boss; that was what would get him going. 

When Ms Adler had been around, it had taken all of his professional strength not to wrench her out of Jim’s plan and steal her away. 

“The top of St Bart’s. Classy,” Elizabeth told him coolly, pausing beside where he stood to stare out across the dreary London morning. He shrugged nonchalantly, ignoring the wrinkle of her pale nose as he breathed out a flurry of grey smoke from his mouth. 

“Jimmy would have loved it. Pity he isn’t here really.”

“This whole scheme stinks to high hell of him. It was probably in your instructions, Tiger.” 

There was silence between the pair of them for a moment as Sebastian sucked at the cigarette, allowing him to glance over at her immaculate figure. She wore a closely cut black trenchcoat, flared around the hips to give it an almost skirt-like look. He could guess the briefest scent of cologne on the collar that she had worn it the last time she’d seen Jim. If he could put money on it, he would bet that they’d spent a night with each other, both obnoxiously but lovingly fucking each other’s brains out, and then the next morning had gone their separate ways until he had arranged to meet her again. It seemed to be their method of falling in love. It wasn’t conventional, he could admit that. But it was there’s. Her legs were bare, leading down to towering black heels with a slick of red on the sole. Her dark hair had been neatly arranged in a French roll, tucked away from her face to reveal dark red lips, bright against the simplicity of her complexion.

“Don’t make me tell on you, Sebby,” Elizabeth murmured tellingly without looking over at him, “He wouldn’t like it if he knew you were smoking. You said you’d quit.”

“You wouldn’t tell on me. You’re not that cruel.”

“I’m the wife-to-be of Jim Moriarty, the most dangerous man in the world. Honey, if I wasn’t cruel, who else would be?”

It was at that that Sebastian dropped his cigarette onto the floor with a jolt of surprise. Jim was many things, but a married man just wasn’t one of them. His first thought had been that it was just another one of Jim’s plans, something to keep Elizabeth busy until he could finally sink his teeth into Sherlock Holmes. But Elizabeth was…she wasn’t just a woman to Jim. Anyone could see that. Perhaps he had been serious, for once. 

“Congratulations, then,” he finally muttered, reaching out to stub away the burning remains of his last luxury with the sole of his expensive shoe. The blush on Elizabeth’s face said more than her mouth ever could. 

“I know what you’re thinking,” she replied softly, the briefest touch of frost on her delicate voice, “And it’s got very little to do with love and a lot more to do with sex.”

“So you’re marrying him because he’s a good shag?”

“You don’t have to be so crude. There is love there, of course. It’s just…semi-permanent.”

“A likely story.”

“It’s what Jim wants,” she finished roughly, causing Sebastian to bite the insides of his cheeks to stop himself from blurting out what a fool Elizabeth was for thinking a man like Jim Moriarty was ever capable of actually loving someone, “Now where’s the money?”

He reached down for the silver suitcase by his feet, handing it over without even looking in her direction. He had learned that looking someone in the eyes for too long betrayed the vulnerability behind every villain, and one who chose to partake in such a fleeting activity often found themselves six feet under as a result of it. 

“Since you asked so nicely,” he chuckled sarcastically, shoving his hands in his pockets as she curled her hands around the handle, swaying it beside her legs. Her smile was back now, the same sly little smirk that gave her the familiar glare of his boss. 

“I think I might have you fired for that, Sebby. You should be nicer to your Boss’s new wife.”

“You’re a bitch, Elizabeth.”

She laughed suddenly, crimson lips parting only briefly. “Oh honey. You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

Reaching over, she picked up the case with two leather gloved fingers before patting him on the shoulder and turning back towards the exit. She walked, as always, he noticed, with the pride of a peacock, and yet on her it looked strangely ordinary. If he was blinking, he would have believed that it was Moriarty himself stood before him. 

“Have fun on your next job, Sebby,” she called out, disappearing underneath the steps and making her way to the bottom floor. 

“I don’t have a---“ he began, only for his phone to buzz violently in his inside pocket. The warning sign that the person with his name on their wrist was ready to be shovelled into a grave. 

“She’s good,” he whispered to himself, before he took one last solitary look out across the city and followed her back down the stairs and away from the rooftop. 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The entrance to the Penitentiary was deserted when Elizabeth stepped inside, a gust of cold air following around her ankles like a persistent child. She moved towards the front desk, hoping to find someone who would be so entranced by the cash that she could simply grab Jim and leave before anyone asked any serious questions. Unluckily for her, the entrance desk was manned- however little. With his feet rested up against his desk, scuffed shoes knocking against a mug of a woman taking off her clothes, sat an overweight man in his middle forties, stomach straining out of his navy shirt. Flecks of white powder and some ominous dark stains littered the front, with the tell-tale signs of early perspiration decorating his inside collar. When he spotted Elizabeth walking towards him, his feet dropped and he sat upright, trying to look presentable. It was a little too late. 

“Hi,” she smiled sweetly at the guard, leaning forward to allow him an ample view of her cleavage, “I’m here to post bail for an inmate?”

“You can’t be serious. This is a pen---- you can’t bail out someone who’s already been sentenced,” the guard asked suddenly, laughing in half-pity, half dismay, his eyes still drawn annoyingly towards her chest. Rolling her eyes, Elizabeth reached for the suitcase she had let rest by her feet. She slammed it against the desk, giving the guard the evilest look she could muster as she clicked it open, revealing the heaven that was its minted contents. 

“In this case is one hundred and twenty five million pounds. Cash. I think you’ll find that adequate enough to let Mr Moriarty go.” 

The guard was speechless. A bead of sweat trickled along his thick neck, joining a damp patch at the bottom of his collar. Much as though a deity had just wandered down from the heavens and opened up his arms to the poor man, standing in the presence of such unimaginable wealth was enough to make him catch his tongue. 

“I…I-I-I don’t…uh…”

“Are you in charge, Sir? If not, I’d like to speak to the person who is,” she said, tone decidedly bored. The longer she had to wait to spring Jim out of prison, the longer she’d have to hide that underneath this particular coat was her bare flesh and nothing else. And it was starting to get a little uncomfortable. 

“I’m in charge, yeah,” he replied suddenly, as though he’d finally found his back bone. 

“Good. Then you’ll let Mr Moriarty go, and you can take the bail money. OK?”

The guard nodded dumbly, reaching for the set of keys around his waist and bringing up the only one that looked like it hadn’t been touched in decades. Obviously, they’d believed that their little friend would be sticking around for longer. 

Minutes passed like seconds as he led her further into the heart of the prison, past groups of men in the gym with concentration inked across the faces, past screamers and creepers and people who leered at her chest as she walked past like they hadn’t seen a decent pair of breasts in years. It wasn’t until the walls around them got a little quieter that Elizabeth’s heart began to beat a little faster. He was here, he was close. She could almost breathe him in. 

“Here we go,” the guard whispered shakily as he stopped by a large iron door. He fumbled the key in the lock, reaching up to the side to punch in a four digit code on a small black keypad. 

The doors to the cell slowly slid open, revealing an oblivious Jim. In his hand was a copy of the Bible, and though he looked as though he was poring over the scripture, the bemused expression that crossed his lips ever few lines was enough to tell her that he was, as always, firmly on the side of the Devil. He glanced up, fleetingly for a moment, then as her figure came into focus, stared his fiancée up and down like a man finding a mirage after days trapped in a desert. 

“Lizzy,” he whispered, throat parched and almost dry. The guard was watching the pair of them intently, waiting to see whether something was truly suspicious about their activity, and with all the lack of theatre training she had, Elizabeth drew herself up to full height and let out the briefest of sobs, her face crumpling. Ever one to play the doting lover. 

“Baby…look at you,” she breathed, ever the dramatist, running to the bench he had perched himself upon and taking his grubby face in her hands. 

Truth be told, he did look a little worse for wear- he obviously hadn’t shaved at all in the three weeks, his usually pristine pale face was marred with the remnants of a black eye and angry red scratches. His clothes appeared to be wearing him rather than the other way around- three weeks with little food had given him a rather gaunt, orphan-like complexion. His hands reached desperately for hers, touching and clutching until he could be convinced that she was real again. The mischievous glint behind his eyes was still present, and yet his face looked as though he had just survived an explosion. His head fell onto her chest, the brief scratching gasps of a man close to tears echoing through the room as Elizabeth reached for him, holding him close. 

“I’m taking you home, Jimmy, I’m taking you away.”

“Lizzy…oh God, Lizzy the things I’ve seen here, such horrible things! I…I…”

“Sssh, Jim. Sshh…”

The heavy footsteps around them told the pair that the guard had stepped away to give them a moment’s privacy and yet, as soon as his peeping eyes disappeared, Jim’s face returned to its usual mischievous self. 

“My suit?”

“In the car. Ready to take us to the Penthouse,” she replied quickly, folding her hands into her lap. 

“The second card?”

“About to be deposited. I left it with Sebastian- I think he can handle a little leg work this morning.”

Jim shuddered, what appeared to sound like a growl leaving his throat as he grabbed her face, bringing their lips together. 

“God, Woman, you’re gorgeous when you’ve got a little power.” 

His kiss burned, his tongue moving like he’d been starved, and yet all she could do was let him have his moment in the sun, indulging in a sugar crush that he’d been separate from for weeks. She reached for him, clutching his ratty t-shirt in her hands, slipping her fingers under the hems and running her palms over his warm skin. A reminder, if anything, that he was still undeniably real. And yet in the end, it was she who broke their kiss, staring up at a man who had, though simultaneously caused her pain, guilt and grief unimagined by her younger self, ultimately captured her heart and turned her into a real criminal. 

“Now my Darling boy,” she smiled smoothly as she stroked his unshaven chin, her eyes taking in the return of Mr Moriarty himself, “Let’s go catch ourselves a Mr Holmes, shall we?”


	5. Romeo, Oh Romeo

_December, 2013_

“Get your shit together!”   
  
He’d never been hit by a woman before, and now that he’d experienced it for the first time, Elijah decided he rather liked it. Particularly when the woman was a small and lithe as the one stood before him, and the same woman who paid his wages.   
  
“Oh, I like you tonight, Miss Elizabeth. You’re feisty. Jim not been getting you off recently?”   
  
They stood together under the pale glow of a streetlamp, the only reprieve on a silent street of complete black. It lit only their silhouettes, rather than blasting a helpful glare onto the other houses of the street. It was a suburban area that she’d picked; somewhere that if he got too loud, someone would notice them, and if the pair of them were caught, then she could twist his arm backwards and make him the puppet in her game once again. She could be the girl who cried attack, and nobody would bat an eyelid.

 _Never trust a man’s intentions_.

Elizabeth was not a force to be reckoned with, and as another sharp slap dusted thickly across his cheek, his reaction was caught somewhere between a vibrant hiss of pain and a chuckle from the sadist buried deep within his gut. Her lips were pursed in a thin line, their usual red gone and left unusually bare. Judging by the oversized navy coat that she wore, the sleeves draping her slender arms and the body drowning out her frame, marred only by a belt tied tightly around her middle and pulling in at her impossibly tiny waist, she had come straight from her love nest. Her hair wasn’t even as precise as usual. Elijah concluded silently that she had been spending today with Jim, both wearing very little in the way of clothing. She grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and pulled, hard, until his towering frame had reached her burning expression. Games were not fun when she wasn’t in control.

“Those idiots on Baker Street are coming too close to finding you out. If you don’t keep your mouth shut, you’re going to have me to deal with,” she hissed darkly.

“Oh, I’m so scared,” he replied playfully, shoving his freezing hands into his jacket pockets.

The wind was blowing faster now, screeching around their heels and turning the tips of his fingers a blushing pink. Elizabeth looked less than sympathetic to his cause- she wore a pair of tightly cut leather gloves, enough to stop the cold from freezing her fingers.

“If Sherlock finds out you’re a fake- or if his boyfriend does it for him- I’ll be ruined. _We’ll_ be ruined.”

Her words had lost their bite, her once languish protection crumbling around her at the prospect of being discovered. On her own, Elijah suddenly realised, she was just a little girl trying to play a game with the adults. She was nothing without him.

“Not so big without Jimmy to protect you, are you?” he taunted softly, his words biting at the bitterly cold air, “Maybe I should take care of him myself, and then we’ll see just how much you like bossing me around.”

Her fist collided with his jaw faster than he could reach up to block it. Caught off guard, he stumbled to the damp ground, narrowly avoiding breaking his neck by tripping over his own feet. And standing above him, like the dark angel at dawn, Elizabeth burned like hell-fire before him.

“You touch a hair on Jim Moriarty’s head and I will personally skin you.”

“I’d like to see you try.”

She went a strange sort of silent then, her lips pursing together and drawing themselves into a tight line, her faith flickering so slightly that he felt confident enough to take another step forward, to corner her into the middle of the street, shadowed by the darkness surrounding the puddle of the street lamp.

“I think Sherlock and Watson might be interested to know that this great game they’re playing with Mr Moriarty has been thwarted slightly- by his falling in love. Didn’t he always believe that love was for idiots? For the ordinary? Do you _honestly_ think he loves you, Lizzy?”

She didn’t say a word in return, and yet, in the brief blue of the moon he could see her face go a ghostly white. A strange kind of thrill ran through him. Bringing Elizabeth back down to her place was his aphrodisiac.

“And don’t you worry, little Lizzy,” he continued, “I’ve got dirt on you too. Wouldn’t the world love to know about you and Mr Holmes?” Elijah hissed, his playful demeanour gone and in its place, a sporadic villain who would clutch at whatever straws remained to get control of their conversation.

The demonic look in Elizabeth’s eyes never disappeared, her usually bright irises now a threatening black. She didn’t touch him, simply took one slow step forward, backing him into the concrete wall that separated them from the slumbering families of the suburb. Daring him to spit it out.

“If you breathe a word of that to anyone---I will turn you into taxidermy,” she finally said, with the quietest form of death stinging to her voice. And with a sweep of her coat, she had moved off, back into the darkness of the night as with one, high pitched call she yelled,

“Merry Christmas Eli!”

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Present._

John Watson, as was usual on a Tuesday morning, had his head engrossed in his laptop. He’d been stuck on the same page for hours, waiting for the moment that he could spring onto his unsuspecting roommate just what he had discovered in his trawling of the internet. The man himself was sat next to the microscope in the kitchen, not looking through the lens, but not moving either. He appeared to be thinking silently, the contents of his brain tumbling out into the waves of the air around them. Like a word document, he could visually scrawl down his thoughts and feelings into an incoherent string of consciousness and it all still make perfect sense to him and only him.

No one, John had learned, had gotten, or even tried to, get past that barrier in Sherlock’s mind. In itself, it was like a scrapbook, a collection of stuff that to some may be considered as completely useless, but to the Consulting Detective, had its own individual relevance and importance.

“For Goodness sakes, John,” Sherlock suddenly muttered, reaching out for a small stack of papers beside him as he glanced over at the other occupant of the flat, “If you want to tell me something, I’d rather you spat it out than just sat there wondering how to tell me. It’s wasting both of our time.”

“How did you…?”

“And there was me thinking you’d moved on from asking that question. John, your left eyelid twitches whenever you’re withholding information. Get it checked out. You’d be useless in an interrogation.”

“Thanks,” John muttered in reply, a little disheartened as he scrolled through the page.

With a sigh of discontent, which Sherlock deftly ignored, John lifted the humming laptop from his legs and strolled over to Sherlock’s science table, clearing away a little of the junk to set it down beside him. Sherlock’s mouth opened to protest, but the brief flicker of John’s expression in his direction informed him that it was wiser to simply let it slide, just this once.

“You have a fan-site, Mr Celebrity,” John said, pushing the laptop in his direction.

“A what?”

“A website dedicated to you. People read the papers, Sherlock. People get obsessed.”

Like clockwork, Sherlock’s eyes began to scan the homepage, picking up little bits of information, unseeable to the naked eye. For his own benefit therefore, John began to read aloud, hoping to pick up something that he couldn’t first see.

“ _An appreciation of the science of Deduction, maintained and celebrated in twenty first century England by the brilliant Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective. Here, we discuss latest cases and keep you updated with gossip, news and frequent new pictures of the mysterious Sherlock and his sidekick_ —Sidekick? They’re having a laugh!” John spluttered at the end of his sentence.

But Sherlock hadn’t seemed to notice the demeaning title that had been bestowed upon his companion- instead, he was staring at the most recent update, which had been posted just earlier this morning.

“It’s about the case,” Sherlock muttered, eyes glaring over the grey text with a sudden interest, “Blah blah blah, teenagers, blah, Scotland Yard investigates, blah blah, Sherlock begins investigation into---Oh dear.”

“What?”

With a grim expression about him, Sherlock read the little snippet of a paragraph that closed the post.

“ _Though in a conference yesterday, Detective Inspector Lestrade confirmed that these tragic deaths were in fact a suicide- but if we’ve learnt anything from Sherlock Holmes, it’s that they’re not always right. If anything, this Holmesian believes that this ‘Romeo and Juliet’ Complex was in fact a murder- all the signs point to it. It’s much too convenient for them to have just died by accident, isn’t it? LH xxx_ ”

LH.

The words sent an involuntary cold running down Sherlock’s spine. He slipped his hand into the pocket of his trousers and slowly withdrew the blood red calling card he’d received the day before, staring down at the message engraved within it. This LH person had obviously set up the blog as another calling card for him, another clue, another message. This person, male or female, knew what was going on and that concluded sensibly, at least to him, that she was either very quick witted, or behind the murder and anymore to come.

“The Romeo and Juliet Complex? Who the hell does this---“

“How did they know?” Sherlock asked hurriedly, his voice sounding strangely tight within the base of this throat.

John looked up. “How did who know what?”

“How did this…this LH person know about the murder at the hotel? The police only released one statement- and in that they were vague enough just to mention that it was two teenagers and it was definitely a suicide. Not a murder. No one’s had access to files or photographs or anything around the case except for Lestrade and you and me.”

“Do you think someone’s leaking information from the Yard?” John asked quietly.

Sherlock shook his head. “No. No one’s stupid enough to do that. Either this is someone very clever, who’s made a random guess and coincidentally struck gold- or it’s the murderer himself. Giving us clues- two teenagers, just like the tragic heroes, both under a lot of pressure from their families. There was no history between the families- that’s where the connection ends- but maybe their love was forbidden. Somehow. I need a closer look at those files. If only they hadn’t died, then I could have my answers!” Suddenly, he moved.

Swooped like a raven into the living room and away from the computer, pulling his coat down from the solitary stand beside the door and reaching for his scarf. As he began to tighten the thick material into a neat, sensible knot around his neck, John closed down the laptop screen, analysing his friend carefully. He may not have had the scrutiny that Sherlock possessed, but there was something about the mention of the ever mysterious LH that was riling him up. Making him uneasy.

“Where are you going, Sherlock?” he asked quietly, wondering he could at least get a little under this man’s skin.

But Sherlock, as usual, was letting nothing past.

“I need a walk. I need to think.” Sherlock was halfway out of the door when he realised that John was not following him and instead, was boiling the kettle and rummaging around one of the few cupboards they kept for food to find any kind of stray biscuit. He coughed loudly.

“Aren’t you coming?”

“Do you want me to?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes, as though the inner workings of his mind were not so difficult to interpret.

“Of course I do. Who else am I going to correct when they come to wrong conclusions?”

“Well, since you asked so bloody nicely,” John grumbled half-heartedly, abandoning his search for the biscuits and grabbing his jacket from the back of the sofa.

The sound of the door slamming was the only noise that echoed through the flat upon their departure, accompanied by the high pitched whistle of the now boiled kettle.


	6. One For The Bride And Groom

With St. Pancras Church in sight, Sherlock moved like a tiger on the prowl, brain ticking like clockwork. Beside him, John struggled to keep up, having to take two steps closer to breaking out into a run for every elongated stride that his friend took. His breath faltered, swirling like dust in the breezy morning, as Sherlock muttered incoherently. John was the surrogate- he had learned this long ago. That to gather information, he would have to ask his own questions first and attempt to translate Sherlock’s stream of consciousness the best that he could.

“So leaking,” John started breathlessly, “From the Yard. Is that your theory now?”

“It’s not a leakage- the Metropolitan Police are not a pipe, John,” Sherlock corrected him calmly, straightening his scarf whilst narrowly avoiding a young woman steering a pram towards the other end of the embankment. He fidgeted in his footsteps, though to the passer-by he seemed his astute self, poised and alert on the outside, while his brain fizzed and whirred like a Catherine wheel.

“Then what is it?”

“Guess.”

“Guess? I can’t bloody guess, Sherlock- for one thing, you’ll tell me I’m wrong and then come up with some crack-pot theory of your own!” John retorted, voice louder than he had expected it to be.

With a quick calm, he set his expression straight again and stared out across the embankment.

“Scotland Yard aren’t leaking anything, no matter how incompetent they might be sometimes. No, someone’s getting information straight from the source. So it’s either a spy…or someone who’s behind it all.”

With a swoop of his coat, he settled himself on a nearby bench, one leg neatly folding over the other as he waited for a sign. Something had to reveal itself, a piece of information that he had missed. Nothing was ever just random. Everything had a meaning behind it. “Do you think that LH might be behind that murder?” John asked, carefully lowering himself next to the other man. Sherlock briefly nodded.

“I think that they’re connected. What we’re left to work out now is who this person is and why they’re killing people off.”

“This LH…person. First the calling card, now the blog- I think someone’s following you, Sherlock,” John warned quietly, trying not to take notice of the discarded piece of gum that had lodged itself onto the back of his trousers, a bitter souvenir from the last person to occupy the small metal bench.

For a moment, the Detective was silent, still turning over the small card in his fingers. The gold lilt shimmered in the weak sunlight of the morning, and yet it did nothing to alter the message given to him. Though he couldn’t quite put his faith behind John’s accusation that perhaps someone was following him, or even in fact obsessing over his work- there was someone out there, watching him. It added another pair of eyes to audience who spectated upon his every move. And yet for the first time, this pair had made themselves known individually. There had no been no prior sign, no mention of Moriarty or Magnussen, or any other comrade of consultancy whom he had met with in the past. This person- man or woman- knew of him, but they had never met. They liked to leave clues, play games. One could only make a certain connection to an old nemesis of his.

“Think… _think,_ ” he ordered himself suddenly, scrunching up his eyes and fists, forcing his brain to swirl like a tornado. Sherlock lifted the card close to his eyes, opened them, and scanned along the neat edging, the curled writing, the engraving of the initials. He held it to his nose, sniffed like a dog for a moment until finally, he found what he was looking for.

“LH is a woman. That’s all I can say for certain.”

“And how can you be sure of that?”

“Perfume. Women’s perfume-- _her_ perfume is all over this thing. Too much to be just from indirect contact- no, she deliberately covered the thing in one particular scent,” he muttered quickly, taking another sniff until the words came to him, floating like hallucinations across his line of sight, “She’s used….oh, _she’s clever_. Wants to give me a test.”

Sherlock stood suddenly, trying to capture the scent with a few more long, drawn out sniffs. John, knowing better than to question his friend’s incoherent mutterings, watched as the taller man strode around in the spot, circling the small patch of mis-shapen concrete they were perched on like an eagle, searching for its prey. But as always, curiosity got the better of him and with one dissatisfied sigh, he stood up as well, pausing Sherlock’s movements.

“What is it?”

“Aromatherapy. Different scents can correlate to different emotions- she wants me to know something, to feel something,” he replied, eyes squeezing shut again.

“Do you think it’s her next clue? To tell you where the next calling card is?” John asked.

Sherlock merely nodded a silent reply, feet tapping in his shoes. The answer came to him, quickly and all at once, like breaking the water after falling into the depths of the ocean. An epiphany.

“Get me meanings- Google it, bully it out of someone- I don’t care how you do it. Just do it quickly,” he ordered suddenly.

“Finally. Something you don’t know,” John found a quick reason to chuckle as he fumbled for his phone, trying to keep up with the lightning pace of the other man.

“John, I fill my head with important things- science, reason, logic. Aromatherapy falls under none of those categories and therefore, slows down my reasoning. In-efficiency causes the mind to become…well, like yours, really. Ordinary.”

“Thanks for that,” John mumbled, his phone finally loading up a website that explained these different scents.

Almost as though his mind had been read, Sherlock began to walk back down the embankment, leaving the bench behind. Struggling to keep up, John followed like an obedient puppy.

“Jasmine,” Sherlock muttered.

“Anger. It means anger- is she angry?” John replied, scrolling down the page. His friend gave no liberty to answer, instead reeled off another list of things he could smell.

“Lavender, Cypress and….Ylang-Ylang.”

“Uh…Improving memory, easing sorrow and…an aphrodisiac.”

Sherlock paused then, facing out towards the swampy, murky waters of the river before them. It was like a mirror, staring into its blackened waves. The words swirled like soup beneath him and if he just leaned that little bit closer, they would become coherent. Ordinary. The words tumbled out of him like bullets, too quickly to be stopped by ration and reason.

“My guess is she’s angry. She’s angry at me, at something I’ve done- or that someone else has done, but connects to me in some way. The memory…links to the anger. Maybe she wants me to remember something, something about the past- was she involved, did I know her- did I do something wrong? Sorrow, she must be sad- someone is sad. Is it a memory that makes her sad, or is that sadness turning into anger? Regret, remorse- revenge! But the aphrodisiac…the ylang-ylang…”

The wail of his mobile phone was the only thing that could cut him off mid-sentence. Entranced, John attempted to hide a brief flinch as Sherlock reached for the phone, grimacing at the caller, before finally answering.

“What do you want?”

“To talk, dear Brother,” Mycroft Holmes’ smirk sounded loud and clear, even from the other end of the line.

“About what? I’ve told you, I don’t do anonymous clients- not even for Her Majesty’s government,” Sherlock scowled, beginning his brisk stroll back down along the embankment, towards the Church. A small crowd had gathered before it, dressed in soft pastels and fawning over an invisible figure, lodged right in the centre.

“It’s not about a client, Sherlock. I’ve…acquired some information that you and I need to discuss. Following the recent…passing of Elijah Holmes, though who can be sure if that was even his real name at all, I did some research. As to whether the two of us actually have a third sibling.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes.

“You don’t have to be so James Bond about this- spit it out, Mycroft. No one’s listening.”

“On the contrary,” Mycroft murmured, “Everybody is listening. Which is why I ask, and you know how much I hate doing this, that you and I meet. To talk about what I’ve found.” For the briefest moment, Sherlock’s heart juddered.

“What code, Mycroft?”

 

“Code…pink, Sherlock. Two o’clock. Here.”

The phone went dead.

 _Pink. Found. Girl. Relation_.

**_Sister?_ **

Without realising, the pair of them had reached the base of the church steps. John was paused, hands on his knees and breath coming in thick and fast bursts; Sherlock’s walking had become almost a run and even without a tricky leg, any man would have fallen behind in desperation to keep up. Neither spoke for a moment, as Sherlock’s eye caught the small crowd once again. It had parted slightly now, the women in pastel having moved up the steps and into the church, leaving a woman in a thick white coat struggling with a veil. She called up to the church doors, a smile decorating her pretty face. But as she turned back, the veil slipped from its delicate position on her hair, caught up in the wind, and soared off in the direction of the Detective.

Within seconds, he’d caught the flimsy mesh of material in his palm and with a slightly forced smile, made his way towards the glowing bride.

“You caught it! Thank you,” she grinned, her cheeks blushing as she turned to Sherlock. Hastily, she reached out and began to pull it over the top of her head, balancing it a little more firmly this time.

She smiled up warmly at him, only for his face to freeze, caught halfway between a contracted smile and a relaxed frown. Her eyes were colder than the Arctic. Glazed over with an ice he had only ever seen when staring at the victims and their enemies. A look of lust for hatred and revenge, culminated with an icy wind of regret. Of fear.

“Thank you again. I don’t know what I would have done without it. Is there something I can do for you? Anything?” the bride asked kindly, staring towards the two men.

Sherlock shook his head, still wanting to get a closer look at the woman’s eyes.

“It’s fine, don’t worry. Simple mistake,” he replied, holding out his hand for her to shake, “Sherlock Holmes.”

“Thank you, Sherlock Holmes. I hope we’ll meet again someday,” the bride said, shaking his hand, before quickly turning on her heel and sweeping up the steps, into the church. Only as she disappeared did he realise what had been slipped into his palm.

Sherlock turned the new card over, hoping to find another clue. Instead, he found a business card. _Floris Perfumery, London_.

“Come on John, we’re leaving,” he called out, starting back towards the direction they had come in.

Frustratedly, John rolled his eyes, not wanting to run any faster. “Where to?”

“A perfumery. And then, unfortunately…” he broke off, unsure of whether to tell his friend about the phone call.

“Where?”

“Oh. 221B. At least for you. I have some other business to attend to,” he muttered as an excuse before falling back into step with John.

The bride swiftly closed the door to the Church, leaving one last fleeting moment to take in the confused look of the Detective as he stared at the card. There were no bridesmaids in her party now, no frills or fuss that usually provided the foundation of the average wedding ceremony. The women in pastel had been decoys. Instead, as Elizabeth readjusted the veil on the top of her head, smoothing down a stray hair, the only person who watched her was the only other guest in attendance.

“If my neck wasn’t on the line, I’d say you looked gorgeous, Lizzy,” Sebastian chuckled softly, watching as she carefully bolted the door to the narthex behind her, shutting out the busy life of the streets behind them.

The church was a serene quiet, away from the chaos of the world. She smirked, straightening out the veil across her shoulders and shivering as the thick material tickled her bare skin. Her dress was short, trailing out to her feet at the end. As she dropped the long trench coat that she’d grabbed on the way out, her dress fell in soft waves around her hips. The pale white that usually frequented her fellow brides had been swapped instead for an elegant blood red, which pulled in tightly around her body and was complete with a train so thin it could have been made out of tissue paper.

“Don’t let Jimmy hear you say that. You know how possessive he can get.”

“Why do you think I said it so quickly?”

“Do you think he’ll take the bait, Sebby?” Elizabeth asked softly, readjusting the crease on her dress with a comforting pat. As the organ began to sound in the adjoining room, Sebastian linked his arm with hers, staring out across the small sanctuary that barricaded them from prying eyes.

“You’re clever, Lizzy. And he’s gullible. Of course he will.”

“Good. He’ll be pleased.”

The doors to the narthex opened, revealing a crushing wave of sound. The church was empty, and the priest, quivering in his robes as he shot nervous glances towards the large rifle that one of Sebastian’s assistants held wedged to his back, whimpered at the sight of them. With one final breath, Elizabeth clutched a little tighter at the bouquet in her palms and began to the slow glide down the aisle, settled between the pews. Her heart leapt when he turned around to stare, his eyes crinkling and mouth dropping just slightly at the sight of her. She couldn’t help it. That was the affect that Jim Moriarty had on her. He turned her once hardened exterior to discarded brick and dust.

_Mrs Elizabeth Moriarty._

Fifteen minutes and they’d be bound for life. Invisible ropes. Flesh and blood.

_Till death do us part._


	7. Filia Perierunt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My Latin is essentially non-existent, but I think that the title means what I want it to mean. Enjoy!

The perfumery stank. An understatement to say the least, but as one opened the door, a tidal wave of intermingling, mixing scents crushed and roared their way into the sinuses. A light-headed feeling overcame John much quicker than he would have liked, but with the business of finding out what their clue meant in the quickest and easiest fashion possible, he took a deep breath of toxic London air before firmly stepping into the shop. Sherlock had swooped in, the tails of his coat flying in their own breeze, to the sound of a tinkling bell above their heads, and yet the room had been empty. It was completely white- white desks, white walls, white everything. To add to the overpoweringly sickly smell of perfume that lingered in the air, a vase filled with slowly deteriorating flowers sat on the front desk, their stench penetrating the air with an unwelcome exacerbation.

Bringing up the rear was John and a reluctant Mary, who had been dragged away from a potentially relaxing lunch with a chicken salad and Sylvia Day to play Detective with her husband and his barmy friend. Every minute that ticked away was another minute lost to a hair-brained scheme. She and Sherlock were friendly enough, but there was only so much of him that she could take in one day. As Sherlock began to scope around his surroundings, eyes like microscopes into every speck of dust that littered the room, Mary tugged on John’s sleeve, glancing down at the ticking clock face on her wrist.

“Why am I even here?” Mary whined softly, hissing into John’s ear just a little out of the way from where Sherlock stood, taking in his surroundings. John reached for her hand, squeezing it gently as he offered the most sympathetic look he could manage. Even he was curious to find out just what the perfumery was as a clue to their case.   
“He just wants you to help.”

“I don’t know what help you think I’m going to be- but I had better hopes for my lunch hour than wandering around London with you two playing Guess Who! No offence.”

“None taken,” Sherlock replied cordially, before turning on his heel and staring at Mary, “You, as a woman, wear perfume. Coco Mademoiselle- Chanel, if I’m not mistaken. Probably a gift, not something you’d spend your money on if you had the choice. As men, we might have a basic grasp on the effects of aromatherapy- but know nothing about basic perfume and how a woman, any woman, might chose a particular scent. For example- when you and John last went out, you were wearing something that smelt of apple. And celery. Why?”

Mary looked as though, had she access to an axe, she would have welded it straight through Sherlock’s skull and tap danced on the intestine-like worms of his engulfed brain. John brushed his hand against his shoulder, silently warning her not to throttle the man in front of them, and with one deeply irritated sigh, Mary stood up a little straighter and addressed him.

“So long as you take my opinion seriously- and don’t throw backhanded compliments at me like you do with John- I’ll help you.”

“Good,” Sherlock grinned. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the card, sniffing it quickly to make sure that the scent still lingered on the matte black cover. Holding it between his two fingers, he held it out to Mary to smell.   
  
“What do you smell?” he asked. Mary glanced at him.  
  
“Do you want me to tell you, or do you want to tell me so I can tell you how clever you are?”  
  
After a moments embarrassed pause, Sherlock ducked his head. “The latter.”  
  
“I thought so. Off you go.”  
  
“Cypress, Jasmine, Lavender and Ylang-Ylang. Improving memory, easing sorrow, releasing anger and an aphrodisiac- in that order. Would you have that kind of perfume anywhere?”  
  
Mary shook her head vigorously, her face paling at the very thought. “God no. The smell of Ylang-Ylang makes me want to throw up- and not because it sounds like a made up plant.”  
  
Sherlock grimaced. “But who would wear it?”  
  
Mary shrugged, fumbling around in her purse for her mobile phone. Her attention as dropping as the seconds ticked by, and as she glanced down at the screen she could already see missed texts and calls from friends and colleagues asking her where she’d disappeared to. As if explaining her current predicament would get her anywhere in their social circles. From behind the counter, the beaded curtain to the back room parted and a freshly ordained adult, newly released from the throes of teenagehood, emerged. Looking bored, she snapped the piece of gum in her mouth and stared at the three new entrants into the shop.   
  
“Can I help you?” she asked lazily.   
  
Swallowing his pride, Sherlock took a step forward, holding out the card towards the girl. She looked barely eighteen, with face covered in acne scars and enough make-up to powder a theatre cast, more than enough for one girl. Her dark hair was pulled back onto the top of her head, fanned out and brushed to the point where it was so large it could have had its own gravitational pull. But he didn’t make a note of it out loud. Instead, he held out the card for her, hoping she could provide him with some answers.  
  
“I was given this by a young woman- no name, no context, just the card. About an hour ago, another woman- a bride- gave me a card for your shop and for reasons your brain is too ill-functioning to understand, I think the two are connected. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”   
  
The teenage girl stared at him, obnoxiously chewing the gum over and over until finally, she glanced over her shoulder and called out to an invisible entity behind the beaded curtain, one hand still raised in the air, as though she was calling someone out.   
  
“David! Someone here for you!”  
  
Within seconds, the obvious owner of the shop had burst through the beaded curtain. His hands were stained with green and he still wore a grubby white apron around his middle that read ‘KISS THE GARDENER’ in giant red letters. His glasses were pushed right up the edge of his nose, almost so they smacked against his eyelids and yet, when he glanced up towards the company that had stepped into the shop, they slipped along the bridge of his nose immediately. A once jaunty face slackened and paled to the colour of off-white as with one quick one over, he realised just who the man in dark coat and blue scarf really was.   
  
“Oh my god,” the owner whispered, his mouth dropping slightly when she spotted the astute frame of Sherlock Holmes, “I don’t believe it. She was right.”  
  
“Who was right?” Mary asked, the resounding question of the four people in the room out of the know. Or rather three, as with a defiant look in the owner’s direction, Sherlock was quickly able to deduce reasoning behind her ambiguity.   
  
“Someone left something for me. Didn’t they?”  
  
The owner nodded dumbly, reaching underneath the counter until she revealed, anti-climatically, one single flower. A white rose, with a small envelope stuck underneath it. Sherlock took one step forward, feet pausing neatly prior to the white desk, and stared down with one of the few looks of confusion that he often blessed his companions with.   
  
“She said you’d recognise the scent- said you’d get it right. Oh God,” he clapped his hand across his mouth, closer to tears than a femme fatale at her final moment, “How did you know?”  
  
Sherlock didn’t answer. Instead, he reached for the letter, tearing it away from the mossy stalk and ripping open the top with a quick tear of his index finger. A rough piece of cream coloured card fell into his hands, engraved in neatly penned handwriting, a message for him.

‘ _Clever boy, Mr Holmes. Your knowledge knows no bound,_

_You’ve had your taste of enemies (and one was just a hound)._

_But fear me, Mr Holmes, for you surely know me,_

_Unless your memories block me out- what a tragedy that would be!_

_Your brother has some answers to questions that come to mind_

_I’ll always be one step ahead- and you two six feet behind_

_Keep on watching, Mr Holmes, I’ll reveal myself to you,_

_But for now- keep trying to solve my puzzle- and here is your next clue…_

_LHx’_

John, who had been reading over his shoulder, glanced quickly up at the engraved initials at the bottom of the page. The rest of the page had been written in a neat blue, the bottom had been scratched out in a dark red, crusting to a black by the ‘X’. It didn’t take someone with the mental capacity of his companion to know that it wasn’t ink that stained the letter.   
  
“Can we get DNA from the blood?”  
  
“Perhaps. It’s worth a try- I’ll have to go the lab. The ink…from a Montblanc, a fountain pen. Obviously, despite the scavenger hunt she’s leading me on she---“ Sherlock came to an abrupt stop in his quickfire reasoning, face suddenly ablaze with a moment of ingenious clarity.   
  
“What?” John asked quickly, “What is it? What have you found?”  
  
“That’s what she’s doing,” Sherlock exclaimed, clutching the card between his fingers as though he were a child, unable to part with a beloved toy, “This LH woman, whoever she is, wants me to follow the clues until I can work out who she really is! It’s a hunt, a race to the finish line to see whether I can crack her code before time runs out! She wants a game, and I am merely her lowly participant.”  
  
“Sherlock,” John said softly, after a quick nudge in the ribs from his wife led him to a quick conclusion that he’d hoped his friend had not forgotten, “You know who else liked to play games? Do you remember Sherlock? Let me fill you in- he strapped a bomb to my chest to try and kill me, blew up and old woman and poisoned a couple of kids _for his little game_!”   
  
The man appeared to have not considered this. For a moment, he glanced down at the objects he’d been presented with; the rhyme, the perfume, the little card. Nothing added up, nothing made any kind of logical sense to him. It was as though the pattern had been deliberately set to confuse him, to send him down random paths until finally, he stumbled across the correct one. Someone was trying to trick him.   
  
“I did think about it,” Sherlock lied quickly, “But I’ve ruled it out. Moriarty likes to be direct. He wouldn’t employ someone else to do his dirty work- he likes the games too much. It’s not his style to lead someone on a chase under a pseudonym. No. This is someone else.”  
  
“But Sherlock, I…”  
  
“Somebody else, John. End of story.”   
  
With a final screech of determination pumping through him, Sherlock turned to the terrified shop keeper and his assistant, who still seemed bored by the whole debacle.   
  
“What was her name? The woman who made the scent, who wrote the letter. Did she leave a name- she has to hasn’t she?”  
  
The owner shook his head, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans to try and stop them from shaking out of his own physical control.  
  
“No. There wasn’t a name. She um…she said that you’d be able to deduce what the name of the perfume meant. She didn’t give a name for herself, just the perfume.”  
  
“And? What was it?”   
  
Rather than saying the word aloud, the owner slid a small white card over to Sherlock, a strange difference from the neatly cut black squares they had been used to receiving. Turning it over in his hands, Sherlock uttered beneath his breath, not even loud enough for his companions to hear, the two words that had been carefully printed in block capitals.   
  
_Filia Perierunt.  
  
_ John took another step forward, glancing down over Sherlock’s hunched figure to try and work out what the card said. Muttering the words over didn’t seem like enough- they were a foreign, unknown language to John and even if he squinted hard enough, the English escaped him. Instead, he looked to his partner for guidance.   
  
“It’s not pig Latin, is it?”   
  
“No. Though I wouldn’t have expected you to guess that. It’s actual Latin,” Sherlock replied curtly, lips mumbling to themselves as he scanned over the words, trying to make sense of them. Almost immediately, he could whisper them out to the shop, adding to a growing sense of unease that felt like a thick, heavy coat around the shoulders of the patrons present.   
  
“ _Filia perierunt_.”  
  
“What does it mean?”  
  
“Daughter perished. Or something to that effect.”  
  
For a frozen moment, the room was completely silent. The gum-snapping assistant had fallen into a quiet shock, even her gum remaining burrowed in the back of her mouth as she waited for the detective to solve his clue, and the owner, who hadn’t stopped quivering nervously like a leaf in the wind since his entrance, had stopped emitting small whimpers of fear whenever Sherlock glanced his way.   
  
The bell above the door rang loudly, causing the owner to jump and the tension that had filled the room to be shattered like a china cup falling to the concrete floor. Mary had briskly stepped out of the shop and was making her way back down the street, yelling apologetically to John that she had to get back. For a second, he looked mildly upset that she’d disappeared without telling him.   
  
“Go after her,” he ordered calmly, ducking the letter and the new cards into the inside pocket of his coat, “I’m going to see Mycroft and I’d rather you didn’t witness such a familial gathering. Anyway, the business doesn’t concern you.”  
  
It was one of the few times Sherlock had been curtly assertive towards him, and it took John a few moments to process the command. But with a brief sigh of relief, he offered Sherlock a mock salute and made for the door, only pausing in the threshold to offer a word of warning to his friend.   
  
“Be careful. You have a habit of attracting weirdos,” John warned, before stepping out on the street and following after his wife, the obedient puppy to her invigorated trainer attitude.   
  
With a small smile, Sherlock nodded towards the shopkeeper and the assistant, thanked them and followed his friend out of the shop. As he head off in the other direction, a wash of unfamiliar anxiety brushed over him. The woman who was following him, tracking him down, making him play her game.   
  
Could she be the one Mycroft had warned him about?


	8. Dr Watson and I

_Message received. SMx_

When the text slid its way into her inbox, Elizabeth was already halfway out of the country. The wedding ceremony had been short and sweet, enough that they could quickly say their vows, exchange the rings and a brief brush of lips before they left Sebastian to deal with the priest on his own. Jim had never been fond of staying in more than one place for an extended amount of time, and as she had done for the majority of her adult life, wherever his restless feet took him, she obediently followed.

Sat next to him in a taxi, soaring down the motorway that would take them directly into central Dublin, she couldn’t help but glance down at their hands. Hers seemed bare without the thick wedge of gold and diamond that now retained a firmly cemented place on her fourth finger and his finally looked complete with such a simple band taped around it.

Tucking her phone into the pocket of her high-collared jacket, Elizabeth glanced out of the tear streaked window.

“He found the perfume, Jim.”

Not even that statement could tear him away from the much loved paperback in its hands, its pages finely crinkled and jacket creased, marked and slightly torn. He drank the words like smooth liquor, as though it was the only thing that gave him a thrill any more. Turning the page, Jim barely looked up at her.

“You say that as though you expect me to be surprised.”

“And what if I do?”

“Then you’re an innocent fool. It’s Sherlock Holmes, Lizzy- he’s a smart man. He is my intellectual equal.”

“I thought you’d at least be impressed. I managed to convince several people to go along with a plan, organized by a strange woman, under the pretence that I’d slit their throats if I didn’t.”

“Child’s play, darling. Let me know when you do something actually worth talking about. That’s when I’ll pay attention.”

Disappointed, Elizabeth pressed into the starchy material of the seat until it began to swallow her up. For once, she had hoped that the conjuring of such words would excite him, would force his head out of that stupid book and into their conversation. As opposed to leaving her high and dry, alone with her own thoughts, she wanted him animated, involved. The way he had been in London, the way he was when he discussed the stars, the universe, the great anonymity of the wonders of the galaxy. When he discussed Sherlock Holmes.

As the taxi paused in a great line of sombre traffic, Jim glanced up, finally closing the book on an unmarked page when he noticed her stubborn expression.

“And now you’re angry with me. Aren’t you? What have I done now?”

She didn’t justify a reply. Rather, Elizabeth folded her arms over her chest and glared out across the cool red-brick buildings that scattered the city, punctuated by ugly metal strips of bric-a-brac tram line, ignoring him. Sighing, Jim stuffed the book onto the inside of his pocket, shuffling across the seat until they were almost side by side.

“Is this what the cold shoulder is like? Hm?”

Again, Elizabeth remained infuriatingly silent. For a moment, Jim considered giving up entirely and returning to his book, but with a renewed determination, he remembered his goal. The only thing that made their marriage worth having. The prize. He leaned over, taking her hand in his and with a small chuckle, lifted it to his lips.

“I’m sorry. Really, I am. Do you forgive me?”

She stared at him, wondering if he had truly lost his mind now that they were out of London, and yet, something tugged at her heart strings. Pulled and yanked at them until she could no longer feel anything but a pitiful love for him, a strange obsession that she had carried with her flesh and blood since her eighteenth year.

“For now. We’ll see how you go when we get to the house.”

Satisfied enough to keep him going until the train station, he leaned over and kissed her pale cheek, the creamy flesh cold against his lips. The air in the cab was now sending an unwelcome chill through the thick cotton of his coat, and he was completely sure that it wasn’t coming from the dodgy air conditioner that sucked the oxygen out of the backseat whenever it roared into life. As though appealing to his weakened state for a moment of unfamiliar comfort, Elizabeth settled next to him on the seat, just a fraction of space left between them. When the traffic began to move again, she let her head drop onto his broad shoulder, eyes slipping closed.

“Tell me what we’re going to do,” she asked quietly, voice low enough that the driver at the front couldn’t hear their copious conversation.

“We’re going to get on a train and go to Kildare. We’ll stay at the house until the moment is right- and then we will go and pay a visit to Mr Holmes. He’ll be expecting us.”

“We’re hiding.” He clicked his tongue in disapproval.

“We’re not hiding, Lizzy- criminals don’t hide. They wait for the trouble to find them, and then put themselves in the middle of it.”

“He’s going to be surprised, anyway. At seeing us both.”

“You doubt the man’s power at masking his feelings. He’s not very in touch with them.”

The rain dribbled along the window, tiny teardrops of water dancing until they fell onto the road once again. Elizabeth had been stunned into silence- these little pieces of information that Jim carried with him were like a trail of breadcrumbs, leading to the prize. She had told him all she knew about Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes and yet, he always managed to surprise her. Such was the man who always wanted to remain a good six steps in front of anyone he worked with- even when business mixed with pleasure.

They sat in silence for the rest of the trip, Jim’s hand laced with hers and her head still leant up against his shoulder, searching for a warm comfort that never quite appeared, but still was present in the way he touched her hand. The traffic moved at snails-pace, and by the time they reached the bustling Dublin station, tucked away from the centre by long lines of brick blocked masterpieces, Jim’s patience was wearing thin.

With a ticking jaw he bought their tickets, tucking them into the furthest corners of his pocket that he could reach. Only when she brought him a polystyrene cup full of coffee, adding a small dash of whatever dregs remained in the hip-flask in her coat for his own enjoyment, did he relax.

“To coerce the Irishman in you to behave,” she told him as she handed the flask back over. He grinned.

“Why on earth would I want to behave, darling, when it’s too much fun being bad? Honestly, I thought you and I were on the same wavelength,” he grinned.

“It’s true. You’re just more likely to be shot in the back of the head than I am.”

He leaned over for her hand again, as though he was silently trying to reassure her that the protection he had organised was already watching over her, like an invisible bond around them.

“That, unfortunately, is only the beginning of the truth.”

They sat that way for a few elongated moments, Jim clutching the much needed coffee in his hand and cradling his precious book underneath his shoulder, she brushed the crook of his elbow with her hand, hoping to draw attention away from her blushing cheeks.

“I’ll be back in a minute.”

Disappearing off in the direction of the bathroom, she couldn’t help but think of how horribly this could make the operation go. Under Jim’s autocratic reign, she had little freedom to simply plan something herself, to let her own imagination run to the next galaxy and back. No. It was all about Jim’s plan. But the temptation was just too great. She didn’t have to say anything, she didn’t even have to let him know that it was her on the other end of the line. All she wanted to do was to play with him.

In the eerie quiet of the Ladies bathroom, she opened up her phone and tapped in a number she had memorized, burned into the back of her brain for years now. Had it been useful, she would have had the numbers permanently tattooed onto her flesh, enough to bear the painful reminder of who those particular numbers belonged to. The dial tone began to sound. Above her, a thick Cork brogue spat through the air, announcing the arrival of a train from Belfast and the departure of one to Malahide, with seven stops along the way.

It only took four rings, four painful seconds until the line clicked and finally, she could hear his voice sing once again.

“Hello?”

Elizabeth’s hand froze. This was a new voice- a male one, but unfamiliar. 221B had always had the same number, perhaps since its construction. Sherlock Holmes had never been one for trivial matters like changing a telephone number.

“Hello? Is someone there?” the voice asked again, a pang of genuine concern straining in his soft London lull.

She swallowed, thinking quickly.

“I’m calling for Mr Holmes. Are you him?”

The man at the other end of the line sounded perplexed at just the very notion.

“No. No, I’m John Watson- sorry, why are you calling?”

“I can’t discuss that with you, Mr Watson.”

“Dr Watson.”

“Apologies, Dr Watson. That information is confidential between myself and Mr Holmes.”

“Alright then. Can I take a message? Or just tell him you called?”

For a moment, she considered just hanging up on John Watson. She had heard about him, of course, of the ‘boyfriend’ that Sherlock had taken up to try and help him with his cases. He’d been a pawn in Jim’s little game of ‘Who Can I Blow Up First’ and on the receiving end of Sherlock’s suicide call. Sherlock was losing his touch. That’s what she’d concluded of it. But now- now Elizabeth believed that he could be useful. Nothing would scare Sherlock into doing something unthinkable like a threat to his only friend.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like you to give Sherlock a message.”

“Fine. What is it?”

He didn’t sound overly pleased to be speaking to her, and with a grin she thought to herself, oh if only he knew.

“Just tell him…I hope he enjoys the perfume.”

The cool reckoning bounced through John Watson’s voice as soon as he clicked two and two together. Jim had always said that Dr Watson was never quite deserving of his accolade, in his humble opinion. He began to speak, frantically, as though he had never once before had the opportunity to confront a villain on the phone before.

“Who are you? And what do you want with Sherlock? He---“

She hung up before she could give him the chance to ask anything else. Anonymity was the power of the villain. With a deep breath, she moved to the sink and splashed some cold water on her face, determined to return to normal. She ducked into one of the cubicles, wrenching open the small bin beside the toilet, and dropped the phone deep inside, dreading to think of what it might be touching.

And as the Cork accent above her began to speak once again, she stepped onto the murky platform, dodging the afternoon commuters, and took her place next to Jim beside the track, wondering what would become of the man who had answered the phone.


	9. Code Pink

The shadow swept into the office of Mycroft Holmes that afternoon. Despite thick streams of buttery sunshine slicing through the tall windows, its silhouette seemed to crave the darkness in which it was secluded, choosing to remain within its safe hold until finally, it could be revealed.   
  
“How long is this going to take, Mycroft? Any suspended amount of time in your presence is wasted time,” Sherlock asked, not making any move to remove his scarf and coat, a hint that he would not be trespassing on his brother for very long.    
  
Mycroft glanced up from the thick newspaper in his hand and with the same repressed anger that he wore every time his little brother made an appearance, folded it over and dropped it onto the side table. His office, the same one in which the man formally known as Elijah Holmes had been shot just a few weeks earlier, still retained the putrid stench of bleach and if Sherlock squinted, he could spot the faint white outline of the body on the carpet. Mycroft didn’t offer him a seat, but watched with distaste for his brother as he selected the seat opposite. It was deliberately lowered and as Sherlock sat, he narrowed his eyes.   
  
“And good afternoon to you too. Can I get you anything?”  
  
“By _you_ , do you mean bothering your assistance into doing something? I’m sure Anthea could do without having to wait on us.”    
  
His brother stood up nonetheless, taking the quiet calculated route towards a large glass tumbler filled with whiskey. Only with a forced degree of exercised self-control could he stop his hand from shaking in fury at his little brother. Even when he picked up a priceless ashtray to examine in the faded light of the room, lips fluttering silently as he pointed out the obvious counterfeit in his hands.   
  
“You’ll surely drink, won’t you?” Mycroft asked, carrying two clean cut glasses of liquid over to his brother. Sherlock shrugged, but took the drink nonetheless, letting the tiniest sip pass by his lips before he glared over at his older sibling. Only five minutes in the room and he already sizzled with distaste for the other man. It wasn’t often that they spent such a large portion of the day in each other’s company.   
  
“What do you want?” Sherlock asked briskly. Mycroft laughed, taking another long sip from his glass for a little Irish courage.   
  
“I explained on the phone, didn’t I? I needed to speak to you about the Code Pink.”  
  
“The Woman.”  
  
“That would imply that we actually know who she is. Unfortunately for us- we don’t.”  
  
He placed his drink onto the desk, reaching into an obsessively organised drawer to retrieve his secret weapon.  
  
“I’ve been doing some research,” Mycroft began haughtily, pulling out a thick folder as Sherlock quickly interrupted him, unable to pass up the opportunity.   
  
“That’s a first. Would you like a medal? A letter of congratulations from the Prime Minister? Perhaps a mention on this year’s Honour’s List?”  
  
“Oh, shut up,” the older brother growled childishly, before retaining his professional composure once again, “Upon the idea that there may have been a third one of us- particularly seeing as the last candidate didn’t exactly fit the bill- I went looking in the classified files.”  
  
“I could have done that in my pyjamas. What’s your point?”  
  
Rolling his eyes, Mycroft pushed the folder towards Sherlock, opening it up to the front page. Clipped to the top of the first page was a blurry photograph of a woman. The bride, Sherlock noticed with a twitch of his jaw. He didn’t like surprises.    
  
But this time, the wedding garb was missing. Instead, she wore a coat, with a belt pulling in tightly around her waist. The photograph was blurry, taken at night, and her expression was mixed somewhere between shock, fear and utter, unexplained irritation. Sherlock froze.   
  
“When was this taken?” Sherlock demanded.  
    
“Last year. Christmas. We believe that she was meeting someone in a private location, a back alley somewhere. Easy to hide. She was caught on CCTV footage walking alone through Oxford Circus around midnight.”  
  
“So what exactly are you implying with this? It could be any random woman---“  
  
“We have a little sister, brother dear. And that is her,” Mycroft murmured at the photograph, still managing to sound completely bored by the situation, despite what a strange position it placed them both in, “But we don’t have a name. The record was hard enough to get into- someone’s wiped it.”  
  
“I wouldn’t put it past even the best government officials to ignore a bribe. Either she or…an accomplice must have had the record wiped down to the bare essentials.”   
  
“Why our parents never mentioned her, I hate to think, but there must have been a perfectly good reason. We never knew she existed.”  
  
“They were ashamed of her,” Sherlock muttered quickly.   
  
“A plausible deduction,” Mycroft replied, “But not something we can call conclusive proof until we ask them ourselves. I think we should pay them a visit.”  
  
Sherlock’s head jerked up, a quizzical expression decorating his pointed features.   
  
“But it’s not Christmas.”  
  
Mycroft groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose in exacerbated despair. He normally had a few sprinkles of tolerance for his little brother, but today the man was testing his limits beyond his own capabilities.   
  
“I know it’s not bloody Christmas, Sherlock. But if we have a sister, it’s likely that she becomes another way in to us…you know…”  
  
“A pressure point is the phrase I think you’re looking for, Mycroft. And I know this woman- she got married today.”  
  
Mycroft sat up, suddenly alert. “Didn’t she tell you her name?”  
  
Sherlock shook his head, mentally cursing his own insolence on the matter. The girl had been clever, simply repeating back his own name rather than revealing her own. It was interesting mechanism, one that he had been too un-invested in to realise his own mistake.  
  
“I didn’t get a good look. There wasn’t a groom anywhere- just some old ladies, I think. She was the one who gave me the card!”   
Sherlock was suddenly jubilant.   
  
“What card?” Mycroft asked, still looking perplexed at his little brother’s thinking.   
  
“There’s a woman- I haven’t worked out who she is yet. But she goes by the initials of LH, and for some reason, is leaving me clues all over London. The bride, today, she gave me a card with an address on it- the perfumery…”  
  
“The _what?_ ”  
  
“Oh, I haven’t got time to explain it,” Sherlock muttered, mind ticking like a bomb as he tried to sort through the mounds of facts. Silence fell among the brothers for a moment, and, as though he were suggesting that they do something that defied the very morals of the human species, Mycroft began to whisper in a conspiratorial fashion.  
  
“What if LH and Elizabeth are the same person? Have you considered that? ” Mycroft asked, only for Sherlock to interject without so much as a glance at his older brother.   
  
“That’s too easy, Mycroft. Not clever enough- and if I know these circles, they like to play games with me. If Elizabeth really were this LH woman, who’s to say that the Elizabeth in the photograph is the real one at all?   
  
“She could be dead, and LH acting as our sister as a way to get to us,” Mycroft said. Sherlock nodded.   
  
“We consider them as separate entities- for now. If that’s the case- then LH, whether she is our sister or not, can’t be working alone. She has to be…” he fell silent as the obvious answer struck him, an ice cold hush falling over the brothers.

As though breaking the tension, Mycroft’s phone pinged. He pulled it out, took one look at the screen, and paled dramatically. With a sigh, he turned the phone around and handed it to his brother, swallowing what felt like a lump of clay that had suddenly appeared in his throat.   
  
“This was just taken at Dublin Airport.”  
  
Handing it to Sherlock, he watched as the man’s eyes danced over the image, drinking up the information within. The bride he had seen, whether she was Elizabeth or not, was wrapped beneath Moriarty. His arm was tucked protectively around her shoulders, leading her through the crowd. Wrapped up in a coat, she appeared to sink into his flesh and become one part of him, away from the rest of the crowds around them. Their eyes were hidden, a blow for him- the eyes revealed the most about anybody. The eyes carried the truth. And yet from the way they were stood- there was something human about it. Emotional. Anyone who had seen them passing would have viewed them as a young couple in love. Nothing out of the ordinary.

“Do you think it’s Moriarty? That he’s LH and he’s just…using this woman? As a cover?” Mycroft finally asked, breaking an uncomfortably long silence that had dropped between them.

“Yes. But not directly. It’s not his style.”

“You don’t think LH is a pseudonym for something? Perhaps he’s trying to get our attention again- he was always rather fond of you.”

Sherlock shook his head, preferring not to give Mycroft the answer. The photograph clearly showed Elizabeth in the presence of one Jim Moriarty, but it didn’t quite seem to add up. How a man, a psychopath with little regard to the frugality of human emotion, could suddenly find himself enamoured with a girl so conveniently connected to the one person he wanted destroyed the most, was too easy. Not clever enough.   
  
“I don’t know! You’re not letting me think,” Sherlock finally growled in frustration, his mind spinning. There were too many possibilities, and an innate ability to process too many alternatives in such a stuffy headspace was enough to kill anyone’s deductive reasoning.   
  
“Now there’s a first,” Mycroft drawled, withdrawing the file. Sherlock held out his hand, pausing it for a moment in its slip, clinging onto the once piece of evidence worth keeping.    
  
“Can I send this to myself?”  
  
“I don’t know. Can you?”  
  
Clenching his fist, Sherlock began to tap furiously against the phone, sending it in tiny bites of memory across to his own. He would have to return to 221B to look at it properly, in a good light, or have it printed properly. Or better yet, slip into the Morgue at Barts and let Molly ask him enough mind-numbing questions to get his brain really working again. She, he concluded, would also understand the inner thinking of a woman. Though whether the female Holmes had also adhered to the intelligence that the collective Holmes brothers held was another question entirely.   
  
“I should have guessed. Moriarty and the baby Holmes. A perfect opportunity for mayhem,” Mycroft muttered, lamenting to himself.   
  
“He’s making it look so real- anyone simple-minded man could take one look at them and----“   
  
Suddenly, Sherlock’s eyes blazed like a bonfire and with a roar of delight, he leapt up from his seat, pacing quickly behind the over-stuffed chair.   
  
“That’s it! It’s a game! Oh my god, why didn’t I see this before?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“If we want to catch her, we have to follow her clues. She’s set up this elaborate trail for us to follow and the only way we can get a hold of her is by finishing the puzzle. Don’t you see? Our sister is working with LH. And I’m almost certain that LH is something Moriarty came up with- he wants me to come out and play. It’s a game for me!”  
  
“Well…isn’t that something,” Mycroft drawled, already bored, “I’ll let you handle that then. Nothing to get myself worried about.”  
  
As though to finish their conversation with a swift punctuation mark, Mycroft pulled his Blackberry from his inside pocket and began tapping away, eyes fixated upon the glowing screen. Sherlock rolled his eyes.   
  
“You won’t get these photographs back.”  
  
“I don’t expect to. Just be ready for a visit to our parents next week,” Mycroft replied, the tapping never ceasing. Sherlock seemed to be frozen to the floor for a moment, the sudden adrenaline of his discovery rooting him to the ugly carpet beneath his feet. His brother glanced up, as though shocked that the other was still in the room.   
  
“Go on then,” Mycroft ordered in an almost loving voice, “Off you pop. This mystery won’t solve itself.”  
  
With an irritated sigh, Sherlock gathered himself up, quickly knotting his scarf around his neck, tight enough to strangle him if he turned his head in the wrong direction.   
“This isn’t an Agatha Christie novel, Mycroft. No need to act like the murderer.”  
  
“Except we don’t have a murder, brother,” Mycroft interrupted, “We’ve got a psychopathic consulting criminal knocking people off left right and centre, your stalker, and our little sister, who may or may not be involved with either- all of whom are leaving clues for you.”  
  
In his hands, the phone buzzed dramatically again, almost simultaneously with the one in Sherlock’s pocket. Mycroft’s smug gaze flickered from the screen up to his brother.   
  
“And it looks like you’ve got another one.”  
  
Sherlock dug through his pockets and yanked out his phone to see a text message from John.  
  
_“221B- NOW.”_


	10. Born In Original Sin

Stepping into the shadowy hallway of 221B, Sherlock found a haze of cigarette smoke hanging in the murky air, mixed with the sour stench of coffee beans and light burning. He knew that though John wasn’t one for smoking- his health tendencies came from understanding the inner workings of the human body and how nicotine, alcohol, sugar and all of life’s other unadulterated pleasures contorted and warped a person’s innards. Sherlock knew of these too, but his habits had forced him to shut down his brain whenever he chose to partake in such morbid activities.

Unravelling the scarf from around his thin neck, Sherlock allowed himself one glance up the staircase. The door to the flat was wide open, and through the smoke he could hear the sound of low murmuring voices. Someone else was there- and he would bet all of the money in his vault that the first person John had called after him was Lestrade. Depositing his scarf around the wooden stand in the corner, now coated in a fine dusting of cobwebs, Sherlock jumped the stairs two by two, narrowly avoiding the step warped by damp, and stepped into the living room of his flat as silently as a soft-pawed cat.

As he had correctly suggested, Lestrade was stood facing outwards towards the window, glaring down upon the street below with a cynical expression that appeared to only be reserved for men of the law. John did not have a cigarette in hand, but a quick glance down at the overflowing ashtray beside his humming laptop gave his indulgences away before he could push it out of sight.   
  
“There you are,” John muttered, leaping out of his seat as soon as he spotted Sherlock in the darkness, “We’ve been waiting for an hour.”  
  
“You know what Mycroft’s like,” Sherlock replied, throwing his coat over his chair and disappearing into the kitchen, “Once you start him talking about certain affairs, it’s very difficult to get him to stop again.”   
  
He reached for the kettle, watching the small metal beast illuminate as the water began to boil happily. Busying himself with a single mug and tea bag, he barely noticed the mildly irritated look that John and Lestrade exchanged behind his back.   
  
“What did he want with you?” John asked curiously.   
  
Lying had always been one of Sherlock’s strengths, and yet as he remembered the small pile of photographs that were shoved into his jacket pocket, now out in the open for anyone to pry through, he found his throat becoming constricted with worry. The more people that got dragged into LH’s little game- whether it was connected with Moriarty or not- the more people were in danger of falling victim to their game.   
  
“Private client. Not interesting.”  
  
The kettle boiled and with a deflective precision, he poured himself a cup of tea, turning back to the other two men.   
  
“What did you want with me then? Saw a grisly murder in Islington? A robbery in Belgravia?”  
  
“More like a phone call from LH in Dublin,” John replied, reaching for the landline phone. Sherlock quirked one eyebrow up, sitting down in his favoured chair and watching the other two.   
  
“John got a phone call from someone who, we suspect, is LH. The call was traced back from a mobile- whose last known location was in Dublin. Unfortunately, there was no name registered to it. I’m positive it was a disposable,” Lestrade explained as John fiddled with the keys of the phone until a high pitched female purr came tumbling out from the phone speaker.   
  
“ _If you don’t mind, I’d like you to give Sherlock a message.”_  
  
“Fine. What is it?”  
  
“Just tell him…I hope he enjoys the perfume.”  
  
The colour drained from Sherlock’s face like the tea dripping out of the bag and staining the hot water. John paused the message again, her voice still echoing around the hallowed halls of the flat.   
  
“No definitive accent- we can’t place her to a particular region. She didn’t address your last name, just your first, which suggests someone you know. We’re confident that whoever was behind the phone call was also the one who placed the perfume,” Lestrade explained.   
  
“And therefore, the bride.”  
  
John’s eyes suddenly widened with understanding.   
  
“That was her? I knew I recognized that voice! Now we’ve got a face and a voice- surely we can get a proper name?”  
  
As John and Lestrade began to converse in softer tones, Sherlock didn’t speak, still hearing the taunt mockery of her voice echoing in his ear drums. Instead, he thought of the girl in the photograph, the bride in her shimmering wedding gown. It had all been right under his nose and he’d forgotten to make the connection. Was his impeccable mind failing him now? He dreaded to wonder if that fact was indeed true.   
  
“What do you think?” John finally asked, breaking the silence that LH had brought between them. Now, he could see, there was a voice and a visual, and a name, if he chose to relinquish that bit of information. Abandoning his tea, he leapt for his coat, rummaging around the pockets until he found the photographs. He was watched like a wild animal as he taped the photographs above the fireplace, where he could consult them from every angle.   
  
“I have a theory,” he began, “That LH and this woman are one in the same. That LH is a construction that Moriarty has created to lead us on a game- and the woman is just an actress of some sort. The clues he leaves are leading us on a trail…”  
  
He couldn’t bring himself to tell them about the existence of the third Holmes sibling- not until he was sure that the two were connected. It would be something he could confide in John, later, as the intricate piece of the puzzle that was still missing.   
  
“That’s Moriarty!” Lestrade announced, pointing towards the photographs that they were now inspecting.   
  
“Thank you for that insight, Inspector- Scotland Yard would certainly be lost without you,” Sherlock muttered, before spiralling to the other side of the room, clamouring for space.

“You think LH is the girl with him?” John asked.  
  
“Yes, sort of. I think he’s the one behind the blog, the game, the bride- and he’s using an actress. There are other theories that I have, but they’re not quite as significant as that one. I just need to work out where to go next…”  
  
Before anyone else in the room could respond to his mysterious monologue, the sound of the front door slamming shut and the chain bolting brought them all standing to attention. A high pitched voice- stemming from the dulcet tones of their landlady- came echoing up the staircase and into the room.   
  
“Sherlock! Sherlock!” Mrs Hudson called up the stairs, each one creaking under her petite feet as she hauled herself up to 221B. Sherlock turned on his heel, glancing towards the opened door. Her hunched figure appeared, cradling what appeared to be a swaddle of blankets, but open closer inspection were a bouquet of flowers. Roses, more precisely- each one a startlingly creamy white.   
  
“Did you order these? Only the man said I had to take them right to you…” was all she managed to say before Sherlock had ripped them out of her grasp, fumbling for the small card that perched atop the buds. It was silver, decorated with a rim of gold swirls, and rather than a long poetic message, such as that that had been left for him at the perfumery, it contained just a very short command.   
  
“ _Think, Sherlock. Think.”  
  
_ “White roses?” Lestrade asked incredulously, staring over at the recent arrival.   
  
Screwing his eyes shut, he let the dregs of memory run through his brain, a venom that seeped through each crack and nook until the information he needed was unlocked. His mind was a safe, with the password constrained only to his memory, and as the key twisted and the lock burst, he knew. Scientifically, he could not explain such a reaction- but had he deigned himself to believe in spirits and things beyond human understanding, he would chalk it down to that entirely.   
  
“White roses mean ‘I’m thinking of you’. And…” he screwed his eyes up even harder, balling up his fist and hammering it against his forehead, “ _Purity.”  
  
_ When he opened up his eyes, the flowers dropped to the floor. Each pair of eyes stared at him as though his insanity had finally become visible. Only after a second ticked by did John’s expression relax, and his consistent understanding of Sherlock Holmes shone through like a beam of light from a lighthouse.   
  
“The language of flowers. It’s another clue, isn’t it?”  
  
“Yes. Yes! Thank you John, you’re the only one with any sense,” Sherlock announced, giddy with sudden laughter. He began to pace, violently, his footsteps echoing over the creaking floorboards until they threatened to give way underneath him.   
  
“Flowers? This one’s not like most criminals then,” Lestrade muttered, “But if I know Moriarty, being unconventional in his methods is rather his style.”   
  
“Purity. When is a person at their most pure? She wants me to think- to make the deduction, which will lead me to the next clue. _God, she’s brilliant!”_ Sherlock said.  
  
“Who’s she?” John asked. Sherlock deftly ignored him.   
  
“The Bible states that all people born into this world are born with original sin. Some theories would state however, that at only one point in life could someone be purer than they would be at death.”  
  
“Birth,” Lestrade replied. The words had been taken right out of Sherlock’s lamenting mouth and with a bitter look, he glanced over at the detective.  
  
“Obviously,” he muttered.   
  
“But what do you think it means?” John said finally.   
  
For an elongated moment, Sherlock was completely still and silent. His brain ticked like clockwork, thinking back to the photographs in his pockets. Moriarty was leading him on a trail, one that would take him far out of London and into the depths of places and memories that he would have preferred to have left alone.   
  
“I need to go home,” he finally said. His voice was slow and soft, as though its very existence had drained the life out of him. John took a few steps forward, ignoring the confused look that Mrs Hudson had worn since her arrival in the room, and gave him the most sympathetic look he could muster without appearing pedantic.   
  
“You are home. This is 221B, this is London. Where else would you be?”   
  
“No. Home, _home_. My parents house.”  
  
“You never go there voluntarily, Sherlock, what’s so important now?”   
  
He shrugged. “Mycroft made an executive decision. You know what he’s like. And besides- I think the next clue is there.”

One of the many things that Sherlock felt a genuine affection towards his short companion was that he only asked questions when it was absolutely necessary. Whether this was because he had fine-tuned his mind after so many years in Sherlock’s shadow to only inquire when necessary, or because of sheer luck, but it was an enviable quality that the rest of the British public could do with learning, in his opinion.   
  
“Then we’ll go. If you’re totally sure what we need to do, then I’m coming with you,” John said. Sherlock grinned.   
  
“Of course you will. I’d be lost without my blogger.”  
  
Lestrade shoved his notebook away in his coat pocket, studying the pair of them as he hastily made for the door.  
  
“You’ll keep me updated, yeah? And vice versa?”  
  
John nodded, acting as the voice for the pair of them.   
  
“Of course.”  
  
Mrs Hudson bustled around the pair of them, offering quietly to show the detective out and leaving the flat, as it once had been, suddenly still. As John made his way towards his own room, ready to pack as hastily as he was able, Sherlock glanced around 221B, now sure that he was going on the right path. He wouldn’t alert Mycroft- at least not yet. His brother would come to find such information within seconds of the pair of them leaving the flat- he would not have been surprised to find their home was being watched from every angle. He could feel the sensation in his bones, but shaking it off as ordinary suspicion, Sherlock stormed into his own room, ready to pack what little he needed. 

Which was why, ironically, he failed to notice the slow beeping red of a camera coming from the fireplace where the photographs had been taped, as someone watched them from afar.


	11. The Vessel

The house in Kildare was stained.

Gone were previous memories of endless corridors and bright, spacious rooms where one’s soul could be lost in each of its four corners. Now, after weeks spent cooped up inside the house, Elizabeth was sure she would go mad if she stayed another day. It had transformed from the immaculate palace they had found it in, to a dump.

Jim was not one for domesticity; rubbish piled up around the kitchen, dishes turned into towering monuments that attracted rodent visitors. She tried to work around his ignorance, and yet whenever she appeared to have made a dent in the work, the pile would simply rise again to even greater proportions. He would not let her keep the windows open. Not unless he was in the room. Now they were away, Jim’s paranoia grew to crippling heights, causing him to hear voices in-between the pipework, and see the blinking crimson lights of sniper’s guns through the smudged glass of every window. He muttered about moving closer into Dublin, getting a townhouse in a ratty corner where they couldn’t be found. He had connections, he said- there were people who could pull strings and let them live like royalty for as long as they required.

A man who handed out favours like candy collected their returns like a weekly pay cheque.

She was glad for the camera, at least. It had been so easy to get into Sherlock’s flat. Time it correctly- most importantly when she had run into him outside of the church- and send over a confidant disguised as a handyman, who needed to take a look at the boilers. Distract the landlady for a few minutes and the camera is installed while everyone’s backs are turned. She had hoped that the infamous consulting detective was a little better at picking up when he was being spied on, but even the most fine-tuned of minds had their blind spots.

As the footage before her played on, she contemplated the placing of her next clue. He was getting so close to working it all out- to her shame, he had not yet made the seemingly simple connection between her, James Moriarty and the photographs she had placed in her personal records. For a celebrated consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes wasn’t very good at putting two and two together.

“Clever boy,” she murmured as he correctly guessed her message through the flowers.

It was a little trick she liked to play, just to test him. It had worked with the perfume and though lightning never often struck twice in the same place, she had trust in him. As 221B bustled with activity, the decision made to return to his hometown and therefore, the next clue, Elizabeth closed the laptop and reached for her phone, the only piece of communication she knew was not being listened to by the other soul in the house. There were only two numbers plugged into its contacts, and with a quick press of one button, the familiar ringing sounded through her ears, buzzing like electricity beneath her veins. Her one connection outside of this house- just a breath away.

“Elizabeth. I was just on my way to see you- to what do I owe the pleasure?”

The Tiger’s voice was loud and soft at the same time, and with a slight flinch, Elizabeth glanced around the room, hoping that she was not being watched by Jim.

“I’ve just been watching our favourite detective, Sebby,” she smiled, strangely comforted by the sound of the sniper’s voice. He hummed appreciatively.

“Riveting stuff, I would assume?”

“He found the next clue. If I’m correct, he and his boyfriend will be on their way to St Pancras as we speak. Perhaps your paths will cross.”

“I hope not. I can’t be held responsible for my actions if I do come across that particular man.”

For a moment, Elizabeth glanced around the room, wondering whether or not to fill Sebastian in on the rest of her plan. If Sherlock worked out the clues quickly enough, she would return to London herself and make a meal out of murdering him. If not, she could relish in the slow burn of the simple case that killed his mind.

“I assume you’ve placed the last of my clues in the right places?”

“Affirmative, ma’am. Now it’s all down to him.”

“Good,” she whispered, hearing the sounds of creaking floorboards in the sitting room below her feet, “Then I’ll return to London.”

“Is there anything I can bring for you, Lizzy?”

“Just yourself,” she murmured, “I think this isolation is driving Jimmy to insanity.”

Sebastian laughed, the roll of his eyes so loud that she could swear she heard it through the static.

“Lizzy, Jim lost his mind years ago. All that murder wouldn’t be possible if he was sane, would it?”

With a soft goodbye, Elizabeth tucked the phone underneath her pillow and left the room, trailing herself along the winding staircase until she could see into the open archway of the living room. Cigarette smoke clouded like cotton wool around the antique décor, staining it with the putrid stench of nicotine. As quietly as was humanely possible, Elizabeth slipped down the staircase, all the while never taking her eye away from the man in the middle of the room. His eyes were almost closed and though there was a cigarette in his mouth, he mumbled incoherently. Leaning up against the entrance, she gave him a few moments of blissful oblivion before she spoke, the same way a mother would speak to an insolent child after a tantrum.

“You’re going mad, Jimmy.”

He scoffed, refusing to meet her eye.

“Madness is a thing reserved for fools and monarchs, Lizzy. Not men with minds like mine,” he whistled softly, waving his arm in vauge dismissal in her direction, “Go away, I’m working.”

His work was spread out as though a bomb had exploded in the centre of the room. Papers littered every available surface, an overflowing ashtray perched in the corner as he clamped another between his lips. Unlike his consulting nemesis, he had no control over his nicotine craving and, had he a choice in the matter, he’d be smoking much worse to clear his head.  Her confidence persuaded her to enter the room, the high of her last achievement powering her like a battery.

“They found the clue, Jimmy,” she began quietly, shuffling aside a few papers so that she could perch on the arm-rest of a chaise couch, “Sherlock is going back to the house. Perhaps that’ll jog his memory.”

Jim seemed less than impressed. He glanced up at her for a moment, as though she had just told him the the empire had fallen and he was now king of the world. Then toyed with her, as his face fell with sarcastic irritation, barely a scratch made from her confession.

“Darling, as I told you earlier- I only want good news. Sherlock finding a clue is about as mundane as finding a rat in the kitchen.”

Her temper flared.

“But…this is good news! They’re going to the home- their mother will surely send them to the graveyard and Sherlock will quickly work out this elaborate scheme we have put together!” Jim paused, his hands hovering above a stack of papers beneath him.

His easy half-smile dissolved in a matter of seconds, his face turning stony and dark at the very outburst she had created. Finally, he straightened himself up to full height and gazed upon her with a fire that could have scorched her from the soles of her feet to the hair on her head.

“In that monologue alone, Elizabeth, you were mistaken twice. Firstly- their mother?”

She blanched, refusing to take the bait that he was laying out for her.

“I will not dignify that question with an answer, and you know why.”

Jim shrugged, the normal warmth behind his eyes now replaced by a cold wind, usually reserved for his enemies.

“Perhaps. But, the real tragedy was your last words. We have put this together? Oh no. No, I can’t have you thinking that.”

“Thinking what?”

“That you have the control here. No, Lizzy, no. You’re so young. So naïve to think that you were the one with the power.”

Quelling her temper to the point where it simmered like water beneath her stomach, Elizabeth stood, her fists clenching at her sides.

“This is my plan. You were simply my execution. If you had had your way, we would be playing a much more dangerous game with Sherlock- perhaps a hundred more people would be dead. I made the terms of our agreement!”

“Our agreement? What a quaint little name for it,” Jim murmured, smiling evilly as he sauntered closer towards her, “You have mixed up business with emotion, Elizabeth. A child’s error.”

Suddenly, she rushed for him, wanting the Moriarty she watched to disappear and for the Jim she loved to return again.

“We’re married! We love each other, we always have loved each other. Don’t you remember?”

She reached for him, tracing the flesh of his cheeks beneath her hands, allowing her lips to kiss his with all the ferocity she could manage. He was locked for a moment, two states of man caught between one scene until, with a might he had never before displayed, he pushed her away fiercely, his eyes black slits of anger.

“You are foolish, Elizabeth. How I wish you could see your insolence! Sherlock finding those clues is nothing- we strive for a larger goal! You might believe that you are the Queen and the world revolves around you, but you belong to me and are my tool to do with as I please. Don’t kid yourself into thinking it’s not true.”

Tears brimmed in the blink of her eyes. Without thinking, she reached out, attempting to strike him, but he caught her wrists before they could do any damage.

“You lie! This is what you always do Jim, you ignore your true feelings for the sake of nothingness! You love me, you love me- you know it’s the truth!”

She barely felt his hand against her face until she had stumbled back, cradling it. He did not wear the look of a man disgusted with himself at hitting her. Instead, he wore the same look of logical self-defense that he had whenever he’d stared down the barrel of a gun. Quietly, and with venom piercing every movement he made, Jim reached down onto his fourth finger and pulled the wedding ring from it.

He cradled the gold band in his hand for a moment, then let it drop onto the ashtray. As it fell, Elizabeth could have sworn she heard the sound of her heart collapsing in on itself, each shard and crevice cracking and shattering with each breath they exchanged. Without a word, Jim pushed past her and out of the room. Seconds later, the door slammed behind him, his figure disappearing off out into the night.

Tears trickled down her cheeks as she forced herself to stand and stumble for the ring, the only sign that her old Jim still existed. Slipping it into her pocket, she forced herself to stave off a bout of tears and made slow, forceful movements up the stairs, trying to forget his echoing threat as it bounced around her skull.

Safely barricaded in her bedroom, she locked the doors and closed all of the curtains, switching on only a few lamps to bathe the room in a comforting glow. She missed London and the safety it provided. When she could no longer trust the man she loved, she had to turn onto enemy lines for the power that she required. Opening up her laptop once more, she logged onto the familiar site she had spent her days creating, praying to whatever deity sat up above them that Sherlock and Mycroft would see her message in time.

_A little birdy has told me that Sherlock is perusing a new case. Perhaps Moriarty is playing a game with him again? Or perhaps a power much greater is pushing this. Well, this blogger has a few clues for him- to see if I can help._

_Don’t believe what Mummy and Daddy tell you, Sherlock. Not everything is as it seems. Though she might be dead in stone- it doesn’t always translate the same way in real life._

_The problem is always in the solution, Sherly._

_LHxxx_


	12. Mother Knows Best

Trains were excellent vehicles for thinking.

There was something rather ingeniously tranquil about a bullet like vessel speeding through the English countryside to allow a man to just think clearly for once. Though his love affair with London was an endless pull that kept him deep in the shadows of the city, Sherlock had a certain fondness for the crispness of the outside. He supposed that his attitude, unfortunately, was rather prosaic; shared by most who had spent their childhoods running through fields, only to spend the largest proportion of their lives trapped in the concrete jungle of London.

He was quite aware he was being watched.

Despite John's apparent immersion in his copy of The Times, Sherlock caught him looking over the top of it as his travelling companion on more than one occasion. There was always a little concern in his eye, a tiny questioning of whether what they were doing was an honest path towards the solution to the mystery, or Sherlock having one of his moments. He wasn't as completely transparent as John thought him to be.

Cursing his wandering thoughts, Sherlock attempted to focus on the case at hand. Another blog post had been uploaded the night before by the elusive LH, this time the author being increasingly explicit in their writing. The riddle of it all was a nice touch, but it was hardly the work of a great philosopher. The blogger's clue had pointed him in the direction of his own parents, whom he wasn't particularly fond of seeing on non-mandatory occasions. But for a case, particularly one this intriguing, he could make an exception.

As he caught John glancing up from his newspaper once again, his conspicuous attempts failing miserably, Sherlock growled with irritation.

'Honestly, if you're going to give me such withering looks, I'd rather you did in confidence instead of hiding behind your paper.'

John was not taken aback by the outburst. Instead, he calmly folded the paper and placed it on the empty seat beside him. They had a window seat, and the train being relatively empty for the time of day, they were able to sit privately, stuck in their own thoughts.

'You should tell me your thought process.'

Sherlock gave him a similarly pedantic look. 'And why on earth would I do that?'

'You're fond of articulation.'

'Big words.'

'Shut up,' John paused, attempting to fight the urge to slap Sherlock, 'You seem to think better when you speak what you're thinking. It's like the words come up in front of you.'

As much as he hated to admit it, there was some truth in what John was saying. His mind was perfectly tuned to working out complicated problems with ease, but even someone with his intellectual could get stuck in the coils of their mind from time to time.

'The girl- who may or may not be LH- is definitely related to Mycroft and myself. A sister which we never knew we had. She's obviously working with or for Moriarty, and the game seems solid enough that it could come from him. Perhaps...I don't know.'

'What?'

'My mother can tell me about the sister link. What's missing is a clear motive. I'd deem it entirely psychological, but one doesn't go on a murderous rampage because one's a bit angry. There's something deeper.'

'And?' John asked.

'And, we can't find that out until we get the evidence from my parents.'

There seemed to a weight that lifted from his chest once he'd released all that information into the air. It seemed to sedate John as well; now that he was fully in the know, he could start to contribute, despite the dead air he would inevitably be wasting. An announcement blinkered above them, reminding them that their stop was next.

Gathering his things, Sherlock began to swiftly exit the both, all the while quietly muttering under his breath. As John pushed his newspaper under his arm, he couldn't help but send a small questioning glare in his friend's direction.

'Something you want to tell me?' Sherlock shakes his head a little, eyeing the pathway out of the train carriage to see where they can make a clean escape.

'Nothing. Just a weird feeling.'

'About what?'

'My mother's going to ask me to do something. I can feel it.'

\-----

The house remained, as it always had, stuck in the middle of the 1990s. He could attest that nothing had changed since he'd moved out, as though in doing so he had created some kind of frozen time continuum that only worked at his childhood home. The path was still a little crooked, in fact the whole house appeared to be sitting at a slight slant, something that brought a buzz of low irritation into Sherlock's stomach. Sherlock strode up to the doorway and knocked rather formally as loudly as he could.

John, wheezing slightly from the upbeat stride that the other man tended to employ when he was on a mission.

'We could have taken a cab.'

'Where's the fun in that?' Sherlock muttered, stiffening at the sound of footsteps echoing through the house.

The door to the house opened and Sherlock's mother, draped in Afghan scarves and brightly coloured, loose-fitting fabrics, smiled at the figures on her doorstep.

'What a surprise! Hello, darling, what are you doing here?'

She leaned forward and hugged her son, much to his dicontent, kissing both of his cheeks.

'It's not a passing visit, mother, I'm working.'

'You're always working,' she grumbled as Sherlock pushed his way past her and into the house, disappearing into the dark hallways of his childhood home.

Slightly more politely, John offered Mrs Holmes a small smile.

'He's got a hunch. You know what's he like.'

'Darling, I birthed him. I know him like a bloody novel.'

John shuddered slightly at such a thought and shifted past her, following Sherlock into the house, where things were a little safer. She rolled her eyes as she glanced back into the house, smirking.

'I'll put the kettle on, shall I?'

 

\---

 

As his mother poured tea into china cups, Sherlock paced with a strange restlessness, wanting to begin the interrogation as soon as possible. But this was his mother. Despite his distaste for social convention, he could respect what had to be done before he launched an attack on her.

'So, if you're not here to see your poor mother, why are you here, darling?' his mother asked him quietly, holding out a cup for him.

He took it, glancing at John, who had sat down on the other sofa, watching the pair of them closely.

'Mycroft and I---'

'You two are finally working things out? That's wonderful, dear.'

'No. Definitely not,' Sherlock scowled, depositing his cup of tea after one measly sip, onto the mantelpiece, 'We've been researching our family tree.'

His mother stiffened slightly. She placed her own cup down and reached into her pocket for a tissue, brushing it lightly underneath her nose in a faux attempt at normality. 'What did you find?' Sherlock paused in his pacing, then got a little closer to his mother.

'Who's Elizabeth?'

His mother began to shred the tissue, a nervous tick that prompted her floor to look as though the heaven's had opened and snowed on the cream carpet.

'She was your sister.'

This fact seemed to perturb John more than Sherlock, whose eyes simply narrowed at the revelation before he continued with his questioning.

'You never mentioned her before.'

'We didn't want to traumatise you. Your father and I made a decision. We buried her quietly and grieved on our own.'

'When did she die?'

'You were very young. We didn't want to tell you because you hardly saw her.'

'I know that. Is she buried somewhere?'

'In the village. It was a very tasteful funeral.'

Sherlock rifled through his coat pocket and, after some dutiful searching, withdrew the photo of Moriarty and his latest accomplice.

'Do you recognise her?'

His mother did a double take at the image. She snatched it quickly out of Sherlock's hand, staring closer at the girl who was hidden under his possessive hold.

'She looks very familiar...'

He was tired of waiting to hear her come to the very obvious conclusion.

'I have reason to believe that our sister, your daughter, Elizabeth Holmes did not die, but rather faked her own death and has been working as an accomplice of James Moriarty since she could understand his jargon.'

He tapped the photo. His mother's face was pinched, a feature that went completely unnoticed by the detective as he continued his monologue.

'So either someone has gone to a lot of detail to dig up our, frankly, boring family history and lead me on a wild goose chase, or you are not telling me the truth!'

This seemed to be the straw on the camel's back. After a moment, his mother began to break down into quiet sobs, the memory becoming too much for her to bear. Sherlock leaned back up to full height, his suspicions confirmed. John, on the other hand, quickly rushed to the woman in an attempt to comfort her, a burning glare thrown angrily in the detective's way.

'Look, you've made your mother cry!'

'A strange reaction for someone who is pleading her innocence.'

It was at times such as these that Sherlock's lack of empathy stung John the most. He glared at the detective.

'Can you just...not, for a minute? Here, take a tissue,' John said, fussing over the weeping mess of Sherlock's mother.

But, much like her son, she seemed to take offence at his brief mothering.

'I'm fine, don't be so silly.'

When she looked up, she regarded Sherlock with a newfound coldness, as though the blood they shared had dissolved and left nothing but putrid water. She reached across the coffee table for the small stack of cream papers that sat there. With the pen from her hair, she neatly printed a phone number and an address onto the page.

'There's a grave. Where we buried her- you can see for yourself where Elizabeth is.'

Sherlock's eyes glinted with this new information. He could smell it, they were close. He snatched the paper from his mother's hand and, stuffing it into his pocket, planted a quick kiss on her cheek and made for the exit. John, shocked, called after him.

'Wha--Sherlock! What are you doing?'

'We're leaving,' he called from the front hallway, 'Hurry up!'

He opened the front door and was briefly taken aback by the figure stood on the doorstep, one fist raised to knock politely on the wood.

'Ah. Beat me to the chase,' Mycroft smirked, not pleasantly.

'What do you want?'

'I'm here to help. You dangle such an enticing case in front of me- I just couldn't resist.'

'Crime's the new chocolate finger, then?' Mycroft's smirk curled into a surly scowl.

'I've got the answers. Do you want my help or not?'

John's breathless words caught up to them before his body did, still pulling his jacket over his arms.

'I've promised your mother you'll come back later to talk to her. Properly and everything.'

Both Sherlock and Mycroft wore the same expressions of utter boredom at such a request. At times, they could be as petulant as three year olds. Sherlock stepped out of the house and almost in beat with each other, he and his brother began the winding walk down from the house. As John scurried behind like a dog, Mycroft spoke quietly.

'What do we know?'

'Mum was very helpful- finally put a name to sissy's face. Elizabeth Holmes.' 

'The girl in the photo.'

'The very same. Though apparently she died.'

'Moriarty must have an excellent taxidermist.'

Sherlock gave Mycroft an irritated look, before wrapping his coat a little further around his body, fighting against the chill.

'Where now?' Mycroft asked.

'The graveyard. But I don't think it's her body we'll find there.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this has taken forever to update, but I finally did it! Yippee. Enjoy, I hope you haven't forgotten little ol' me over here. Next update will be a lot quicker.


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